Karmic Distortion

I have been playing around with a theory for a while of the effects of the translation of ideas. It relates to one of the nuances of meme theory and the myths of how social learning increases knowing. We believe the wisdom of the crowd captures and transmits useful information. This neglects the subtle ways in which sense is made of unfamiliar knowledge and the reasons for this. The effect is particularly acute across levels of consciousness. The process noticed is cyclic and self-defeating, and usually looks something like this:

Scenario: A genuine insight is generated. It is communicated with care. Where the concept is new, difficult, hard to grasp - a different version of it is generated by the new listeners. They (unknowingly) remove or distort the new truth, so that it makes clear sense to them in the way things are already known. The changed and simplified insight is then promulgated to like-minds with that question. The satisfaction of removing the tension of the question generates its own momentum. The distorted truth is then self-affirming. The insight itself, becomes the cause of the reason for its origination. The problem solved is reflected back as the problem's own response to the answer offered, affirming the problem, while hiding it further. The work created, self defeats. What we then discover is consciousness has, the consciousness it has. What we find, is we don't know enough, about how it is we come to knowing.

If I had to name this phenomenon, I'd call it the 'Karmic Loop of the Creative Originator'. There are many of examples of this. The provocative anti-culture artist who's work becomes fashionable in the group that it satirises. The innovative researcher who publishes early, only to have their work discredited, using the methodology they are trying to change. The politician making new policy, who finds its easier to agree with the people's hearing of the need, ends up getting a policy opposite to its originating intention. We see this in the media daily, catching ourselves in the act. Good truths are distorted in their communication and promulgation. The 100th Monkey research re-frame, the IPCC glacial retreat error, the comprehensive selectivity in Integral Theory, are all great examples ... the list goes on.

I remember reading a reflection by education researcher, Howard Gardner, explaining that he spent the first ten years of his work getting the idea of multiple intelligences into the education community, and the next ten trying to remove the distortions of the idea from that same community (1999, p.79). So the question is: Is that ten years wasted, twenty years or all of the preceding years of work? Or perhaps ... this is all good - and humanity is simply doing what it does with thought. Distorting it while finding its own clarity.

In recent teachings on Karma, (the Buddhist law of cause and effect) the complexity of the states and processes of mind involved was partially disclosed to me. I won't attempt to recite the principles seen with my limited understanding. To do so would only evidence the law proposed. That fault is waiting. This, after all, is a compassionate depiction of the entire system of all human (and non-human) thought across all times. It is stated, however, that there are different (future) environmental effects of each of the Ten Non-Virtuous Actions. For false speech, including claiming a knowledge one does not have experience of, one may find oneself living in environments of deception, where cooperation in work fails and there is no-one to trust.

And perhaps that is the simple learning ....

In the moment of promulgation of a partial truth (as I have just done), even with good intention, of something we don't quite understand, we may be diminishing the capacity of our community of knowing, to forever know.

Guiding Nature and the Human Soul

Our unusual book club, Club 451 (which has been going now for over four years) uses an integral post-metaphysics approach to literature. This reveals new author’s works we might not otherwise come across and from our discussions, perspectives previously unseen. We call it Club 451 after Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the fourth-person, fifth-person, first person perspectives we use to discover the book being discussed.

This month’s book disclosed a work of significance and perspective that requests comment. In Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin provides a guide to the unfolding stages of the eco-soulcentric human path in exquisite detail. His stages of human soul development are:

Stage 1- Early Childhood (Innocent)

Stage 2 – Middle Childhood (Explorer)

Stage 3 – Early Adolescence (Thespian)

Stage 4 – Late Adolescence (Wanderer)

Stage 5 – Early Adulthood (Apprentice)

Stage 6 – Late Adulthood (Artisan)

Stage 7 – Early Elderhood (Master)

Stage 8 – Late Elderhood (Sage)

While familiar with many soul stage development models from Joseph Campbell, James Fowler, Harry Moody, Jenny Wade and Carol Pearson something occurred in our discussion with the integration of these loops of circles that connect us and our paths that made me see these differently.

In each individual person’s biological and cognitive development there are parent guides and school teachers. In our soul journey there are spiritual and spirit guides and teachers. In our wider journey in our community there too are guides for the social evolution of society, such as those who lead in justice, equality and sustainability. Yet there are also the guides to our past societies forgotten, where we remember our indigenous knowledge and rites of passage (Plotkin’s own important contribution to our Middle Childhood learnings as a people).

This cycles within cycles approach triggered for me the new role of the guides and teachers of humanity’s own evolution, beyond our societies, and the current journey as we move as one through our growing up to become self-aware enough to enter Early Adolescence as a humanity.

These cycles of body, person, individual, society, species and humanity development all need dedicated guides and teachers. There are guides to the collective consciousness that precedes us, there are guides for personal physical, cognitive and emotional development, we are our own internal guides to our interior development, societal guides guide our social development, stage guides assist our ego-maturity development, there are phase guides for the many transitions between ego-stages, there are elder guides that guide the navigation of the sequence of the soul phases, there are humanity guides that see the stages of all humanity’s faces … and there are guides for the phase transitions humanity navigates continually in eras, epochs and eons.

The difficulty comes in this last category of guides, because as a humanity we have not individually been here before. We are both within and guiding at the same time. This is how the Hero’s Journey of the individual, of the society, and of a humanity of which we are part has always occurred. But to see the path, one cannot see from within. To do this requires the Wanderer to explore, to come back and to leave a breadcrumb trail so that we might find our way to where we have never been, once more.

The question I ask myself continuously is who are these new explorers for humanity's next cycle of development, what will they need and can they go to this place alone. The stages of the Hero’s Journey and its dynamics (and its necessity), to see that which the world does not know that it has lost and have it returned, have always defined this search for that which is intuited and is not yet known. Our boon prize in this quest is the navigation of our own becoming. This is a quest worth undertaking.

Who then will take that path ...

A Fortunate (Surfing) Life

On a recent trip to the East coast for the ISSS conference, sustainable systems were firmly in my mind. While I would not fly simply to surf, to combine sustainability conversations and working on solutions with a day in perfect local conditions, made the trip even more memorable.

My love affair with surfing began about thirty years ago and I have been blessed growing up with uncrowded waves, clean oceans and relatively warm seas surfing diligently ever since. Paddling out at Tallows near Australia's eastern tip last week was a recollection of a perfect day had almost 22 year ago. It made me wonder which is more remarkable, that I am still surfing or the place is relatively unchanged.

A pod of ten dolphins joined us and on a few occasions surfaced all around me. Mothers and babies in the crowd. In my 15 hours in the water back home in the West over the last few days of classic calm and glassy unusual winter swells the same thing occurred and I rejoice in this relatively low impact surfing life.

As mentioned in this month's historic Australian Surfing Life's Green Issue (Issue 252) even the simplest and purest of sports have hidden impacts. Unsung surfing heroes of the environment (a close friend included) raise points in this issue of an awareness of joint responsibility impossible to ignore.

The impacts of our capacity to destroy what we love hit me hard in Byron. After several hours in the water the inflammation in my throat was so great I could not swallow a meal and the infection in both ears made my hearing vanish. Like the individuals in the protest of the pollution unseen of a coastal society I became deaf, dumb, and in pain.

Each time I surf and watch the coastline viewscape change with development, I think the more things change the more they stay the same. Interestingly, Tallow Beach is named after a shipwreck in 1864 which lost its cargo of 120 casks of tallow fat which then washed ashore. We bring our consciousness to every endeavour. If the consciousness is unchanged then the landscape too will become changed, simply by our unawareness.

For many reasons, mostly the joy of the clean ocean where I live - the Surfrider Foundation is getting my renewed membership today and a donation for every wave I have caught during that last trip.

Everything has a cost. The question really is, what needs to be our contribution.

Enneatype Bingo

I have been meaning to publish an article for a few years now on how meta-paradigmatic conjunctions occur. It appears that, over time, disciplines eventually develop schools of thought that become a conjunction of nine aspects. These aspects coincide with the viewpoints from the nine essential divisions of human consciousness.

If you think about it, this would be a logical emergence, as peer community responses to the initial thought leaders will begin to balance perspectival biases where there is a natural diversity of type. While this process takes time, it has a clear destination. In having a mix of views we eventually see the whole undistorted by the vision of the first to see. When this occurs this is a really healthy indicator of the strength and openess of the knowledge community and its engagement.

A.H. Almaas in Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas sets out the nine facets by which we distort reality, with a minimum of psychological pretension. Drawing directly on the work of Chilean psychiatrist, Claudio Naranjo, the spiritual teacher Oscar Ichazo and relating the work to the concepts of Grudjieff's Fourth Way practice, this is an excellent source work on the essence of these Nine aspects. From this base, profoundly insightful descriptions using the Enneagram as a guiding model have resulted. The many other Enneatype characterologies subsequently generated are then only as valid as is the extent of the capability of our human personality to confuse the projection of reality with our own constructions.

Awareness of these distinctions is profoundly useful to the meta-paradigmatic practitioner.




The Nine Facets have been identified in theoretical convergences within the maturing fields of organisational development, systems theory, strategic management, futures studies, apithology and integral theory. Gradually over time all nine appear and the tenth is found in their convergence. So it was a surprise the other day to see at a Dialogue for Community Climate Change Action the nine faces of Climate Change already appearing. These are an extension and refinement of the already identified existing typology of frames from the science debate as it now moves to the problem of humanity's unified response to this global concern (Nisbet, 2009).

Here are the climate change themes spotted so far (for those so inclined) framed by their repeating theme and the facet they reflect. I wonder what they sound like when they sing in harmony as the voice of one choir:

One ~ Design in Sound Science: (Perfection)

"From good data we will gain a good picture."

Two ~ Grass Roots Action: (Freedom)

"All actions, even small ones, can help."

Three ~ Great Leap Forward: (Will)

"Symbolic acts of leadership will show the way."

Four ~ Back to Source: (Origin)

"To listen to the earth is to find our guidance."

Five ~ Observe and Adapt: (Omniscience)

"Survival is found in our adaptive response."

Six ~ Mitigate and Protect: (Strength)

"Respond now before we cannot."

Seven ~ Combine Solutions: (Wisdom)

"There is no one silver bullet solution."

Eight ~ Oppose Perversity: (Truth)

"Push back and push on."

Nine ~ Love and Respect (Love)

"For our kids' kids, act in peace."

Our new game in the serious task of watching the evolution of consciousness is to spot when a field reaches this level of maturity, being seen when the conjunction of the parts reveal themselves as one undivided whole organized around human perceptions. When you do see this - shout 'Enneatype Bingo!' to win our prize.

The prize is - the wisdom perspective from the undifferentiated consciousness of the collective of human compassion acting with engaged concern.

Dignity of Difference

In Sir Jonathan Sacks' book The Dignity of Difference: How to avoid the class of civilizations (2002) is a plea for the embrace of difference in the diversity of the universals of mankind. He reveals something about how we each hold individual and universal truths. To illustrate this he recalls the story of the creation of mankind in the Jewish tradition, as follows:

"When God was about to create Adam. the ministering angels split into contending groups. ... Mercy said, 'Let him be created, because he will do merciful deeds. Truth said, 'Let him not be created, for he will be full of falsehoods'. Righteousness said, 'Let him be created, for he will do righteous deeds.' Peace said, 'Let him not be created, for he will never cease quarrelling'. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He took truth and threw it to the ground. The angels said, 'Sovereign of the universe, why do You do thus to Your own seal, truth? Let truth arise from the ground. Thus it is written, 'Let truth spring from the earth." (Psalm 85:12)

Reflecting on the interpretation offered by Rabbi Sacks it is suggested that God recognized that Man is not capable of the perfect truth that exists in heaven and to hold the pretense of such truth in human knowing will only create conflict, not peace. The proposal is that Man must live by 'a different standard of truth, one that is conscious of its limitations'. It is by these attempts at limited truths that heaven's own Truth is re-created 'from the earth'.

Perhaps that is where we find ourselves in the post-postmodern discourse, where an abundance of truths each reflect the universals of Man's existence and the diversity of our own interpretations. We each make truths to live by in a world of infinite things to know. Like sacks of valued gems each contributes to the others principally by the appreciation of their preciousness. Regardless of their accuracy by another's yardstick of worth, they also reveal something to us that is much more precious ...

... that each truth is the expression of humanity in understanding its own becoming.

Aesthetics of Profit

I was just reading Paul Hawken's remarkable synthesis of information and vision, 'The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability' (1993), and found myself in one of those moments of surprise while immersed in the familiar. In a call for a new language for business expanding its specialized dialect he says:

"The language of commerce sounds specific, but in fact it is not explicit enough. If Hawaiians had 138 different ways to describe falling rain, we can assume that rain had a profound importance in their lives. Business, on the other hand, only has two words for profit - gross and net. ... In other words, business does not discern whether the profit is one of quality, or mere quantity." (p. 10-11)

This made me think of the aesthetics of profit. What would be the qualities we would seek to vest in something that is apparently real, albeit merely a numeric fiction? If something as temporary as a cloud could have qualities, such as ... wispy, fluffy, buoyant, gloomy and stormy, why not profits? I can see no reason, as like Hawkens, I am not against profits or business, only the unconscious desire to externalise the costs of life to a location of isolation that is a solitary and momentary P/L statement.

The question is what qualities would we seek to attribute to the profits we desire? Rather than 'ethical', 'green', 'sustainable' or 'responsible' profits, I am sure we could discover more meaningful terms to recover the emotion of business.

I, like others, would invest in a business whose profits were 'nourishing', 'generative', 'enduring', 'resourceful', 'contributive' or even 'life enriching' to the human commons. The Accounting Standards themselves would require an inspired taskforce of newly enthused auditors to put greater meaning, feeling and precision into their assessment of the human worth of the productive gain. Rather than externalities, the profit forecasts of resonant aesthetics would appeal to the internalities, of our profoundest human emotions.

I wonder which 'beautiful' company might be the first to take this challenge? It is a conversation, I for one, would love to have.

Daedalus' Envy

I favour Bullfinch's classic collection in mythology as a source work, mostly for the side tales and other fables of interest connected to the familiar myths, so often lost in a contemporary retelling.

In the myth of Icarus, his father Daedelus who designed the labyrinth of King Minos, loses the king's favour and they were both imprisoned in a tower above the sea. Daedelus gradually collects feathers and one by one builds the wings with wax that carry them to their escape.

We know Icarus' fate, but his father survives and later becomes the mentor to his nephew, Perdix, who becomes the great inventor's apprentice. The apprentice begins to outshine the master. Daedelus becomes so envious of Perdix's precociousness that he takes a momentary opportunity to push Perdix from a high tower. The goddess Minerva, protector of the inventive, saves Perdix by turning him into a bird, now called the partridge which nests in hedgerows rather than lofty heights, mindful of that fateful fall.

The hubris of excitement felled Daedelus' son. The envy of his successor's successes, which outshone his own, disclosed the master's true nature. In ingenuity there is to be won great praise, but in its service to humanity, there is also great caution and humility required.

The reality is we never complete the knowledge we create, only provide stepping stones to those who will follow. If we are not working for the knowledge to be held by humanity that comes after ours, who is it we are really serving?

Ends and Means

I was just reading a very aged copy of Aldous Huxley's 'Ends and Means' (1938) subtitled 'An Enquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Method employed for their Realization' in which Huxley asks a common question of what is the society we ideally want and, if that were knowable, what would we logically do for its creation. This closing quote reminded me of the central reason why this does not seem possible:

“In an age in which the fundamental beliefs of all or most members of a given society are the same, it is possible to discuss the problems of politics, or economics or education, without making any explicit reference to these beliefs. It is possible, because it is assumed by the author that the cosmology of all his readers will be the same as his own. But at the present time there are no axioms, no universally accepted postulates. In these circumstances a discussion of political, economic or educational problems, containing no reference to fundamental beliefs, is incomplete and even misleading.” (Aldous Huxley Ends and Means p329-330)

The presumption of a diversity of values must now be accepted. Analysis of the belief structures operating and their identification is essential if any public discourse is to be intelligible (or productive). To see the tensions between conceptions we need first to see those conceptions. Making the coherences of meaning visible is one means by which we find a way to our common future. That is the main reason for this research.