Well… first of all, I don’t have kids, and I don’t want any, so I don’t care about the parenting angle. Yay for conscious parenting, though… and Stephen, I agree with everything you’ve said about it. I’d add that, at some point, all of the skill you muster as a father also meshes with the path of your children, who are independent human beings who make their own choices. Giving them the space to be children, to use their imagination in an environment of safety, and to allow them to grow a sense of empathy for the beings around them, is about all you can do. And once they’re 13… they’re pretty much doing their own thing anyway. :-)

Second of all, Archie, you’re making assumptions about the use of marijuana that simply aren’t warranted… and I’ve used it off and on for 25 years, so I’m speaking not from outside observation or something I read from a position paper, but I’m speaking from personal experience… and I haven’t gotten dumb since we’ve last spoken. :-) The myth of marijuana being a gateway drug is just that, a myth. Really, I promise… it’s a myth. The people who try other drugs would have anyway, and the vast majority of people I’ve known over those 25 years who used marijuana have never used any other illegal drug, and don’t want to.

Two major points about that: first, while marijuana (and its active ingredient, THC) are not physically addictive, I know a few people who have become psychologically addicted to it. I also know lots of people who have become addicted to other things, like alcohol and cigarettes. Our personalities each have greater or lesser susceptibility to addiction (I’m addicted to chocolate, and probably caffeine)… I’m fortunate that I really have a very low susceptibility to that, because I have used other drugs in my past that some other people I know became addicted to.

Second, as I mentioned in my blog, one must separate entheogens from other substances. In other words, it’s helpful — even necessary — to take the perspective (as Integral philosophy does) that mystical state experiences are both valid and helpful, and that there are multiple ways to have those state experiences. Meditation is, by far, the most popular and helpful way to do that. Yoga, dance, chant, even sex are all useful to access these kinds of mystical state experiences. Additionally, entheogens are useful for attaining these kinds of experiences, and can be very helpful as a part of one’s spiritual path. The problem comes when they’re the entirety of one’s path, and I know a few people like that, too. For more on this topic, I highly recommend Jay Michaelson’s essay at http://www.realitysandwich.com/meditation_and_drugs. Again, alcohol and cigarettes are not entheogens, but they’re legal… it’s just a shame, and part of a cultural heritage that demonizes anything that opens up consciousness to later stages, but welcomes many things that dull consciousness.

Beyond all of that, though, there’s a simple, undeniable social, cultural, and economic reality: the War on Drugs has failed completely, and I’m also very much pointing to that (as is the author of this column). The use of drugs continues to grow, we’ve spent far too much money on enforcement and prisons, put far too many people in jail, and created far too much misery in people’s lives over it. Everything that’s going on in Mexico right now is related to American’s continued desire for these particular substances. People have criminal records and are denied employment over smoking a joint, which tens of millions of Americans do anyway. This is about just admitting what’s true… not about what a minority of American wish were true, from just their perspective, but what’s actually true, and what a majority of Americans actually support. The War on Drugs has utterly failed to accomplish its goals. It’s been a “third rail” politically forever, but the next generation of leaders after the Baby Boomers, those who will be familiar in one way or another with an Integral perspective, will take the necessary action to shift this destructive policy.

While I personally favor the complete decriminalization of all drugs, and a shift to treating addiction medically and therapeutically rather than treating it through the criminal justice system, I’m open to doing that in steps, where we start with marijuana, realize that the sky doesn’t fall when we do that, and then move on from there. It’ll take a couple of decades, but we will get there.

I love the distinctions you’re pointing to. (And it occurs to me that we can use UZAZU to explore them.) We can identify which aspects of each stage we’re stronger or weaker with, and not just treat the exercise as complete disowning.

And I’m probably choosing Blue and Orange here because I see most people in the Integral movement still running a lot of Green, so I don’t think there’s a need to sell that too much. :-) I really try not to do any Green-bashing, and I’m sorry if it sounded that way. I clumsily worded a sentence… I really was trying to point to the difference between some of the very hierarchy-flattening early philosophy, and someone like Heidegger, who has recovered much of it. Not trying to say that all of post-modernism is pathological (or that all of it flattens all hierarchies).

But they do wear sandals. Well, some of them do. For what that’s worth.

As for President Bush… I’m not saying that he didn’t make any mistakes. There are multiple valid perspectives one could take where his decisions were… um… ill-advised, to say the least. And I share some of those perspectives.

I’m really just pointing to the visceral hatred, though. We can disagree without the visceral hatred. You know, we see how destructive and limiting it is, for anyone who holds this kind of hatred, when it’s pointed at President Obama (even if you disagree with his policies). We don’t always see how destructive it is to hold this kind of energy with President Bush, but it is just as destructive in its own way. And I saw more examples of that at ITC than I thought was appropriate.

And, you’re probably right, it’s more complicated than just disowned Blue and Orange, but I still think it helps if we’re in touch with them. It’s just hard for me to imagine that much anger and hatred if there’s real connection with those perspectives. And I could be totally wrong about that, but it is hard for me to imagine.

Much love,
Scott

I really enjoy the basic premise of this post and am very appreciative of you bringing it up. I’ve been thinking that each person has a different relationship to each stage. So at the integral stages, one has a unique relationship with each stage based on their own life experiences, personality type, etc My guess is that a person could gain great insight into this by reflecting on what their life circumstances were like when they went through a particular stage. However, I doubt this is the only factor (typology is probably another major factor among numerous others). So each person may be stronger or weaker in each stage…may be more or less embodied/integrated/healthy in each stage…and may have preferences for or against each stage. This is a subtler distinction then more pathological ways we can disown/disconnect from various stages. I’m suggesting that even if one is fairly ‘healthy’ at integral stages they will be aware of and value all stages but will still have strengths and preferences related to each specific stages. I am challenging the idea that if we have fully integrated all previous stages then we would have no preferences between them…that they’d all be essentially equal to us (with of course increasing levels of complexity). I think that might just be a green sensibility.

So for example, in your writing my sense is that you prefer orange and blue over green. I’m not questing your valuing of green as a part of the whole spiral, just suggesting you have preferences. And you tend to help draw people’s awareness to toward orange and blue…in a sense part of your mission seems to be to help the help heal/integrate that part of the spiral. And I’d say you seem to have much less preference for green. Above you write, “…than the (pathological) post-modern view that holds all hierarchies as bad”. Now for me, someone who loved my experience of green and still feels so much fondness for it (and probably still dwells there to an extent ;-)…I feel a little protective of green. So I find myself thinking, wait a second, challenging hierarchies is what green does, it’s not pathological…that is one of green’s main characteristics….so are you saying green is fundamentally pathological? So in the same way that you seem drawn to helping people see orange/blue with more acceptance, understanding, compassion, and appreciation…I feel drawn to doing the same for green. Even if green sometimes feels like my annoying little brother to me.

George W. Bush. Full disclosure, Bush isn’t much of a trigger for me, in fact I actually feel alot of affection toward him. That said, I wish you would of used different examples of blue/orange. I know that Bush is a huge trigger for so many people. And I see the blue/orange in him that led you to using him as an example. However, I think there is so much complexity that leads people to being triggered by him that it confuses your point. Obviously, I also encourage everyone to look at their resistances/triggers/judgments/etc of Bush. So much good would come from that, however I highly doubt that it would mostly be reduced to disowned orange/blue. I’d love to see you use some other examples that make your same point if you’re willing. Thanks.

much love and gratitude,
seth

In brief, I agree: dictators do bad things. I agree: sometimes intervention is called for. I disagree: one need not be a dictator to do bad things on an immense scale. To say Bush “made mistakes” as if his agenda was rooted in the best of intentions is, in my view, to give him and his administration an incredibly generous benefit of the doubt, one that I would say there is ample evidence to disprove. To call him a dictator, sure, that’s ridiculous. To say he and his administration are exempt from the same sort of scrutiny we would apply to analysis of a dictatorial regime kind of seems to imply that only dictators can cause harm on a god-awful scale, and this strikes me as disingenuous and wrong-headed.

Okay, so you probably are not saying he is exempt, but, when you say that anyone drawing parallels between Bush and those three dictators “immediately loses you”, to me that implies that you’re not open to a conversation that may reveal some legitimate parallels. To frame any such attempt as intellectual dishonesty is to convey that other perspectives are not likely to be considered in a spirit of openness and humility. It comes across, to me at least, as a dismissal. And, to argue for why more openness to that particular conversation could be worthwhile — I think it just depends on what sort of parallels and comparisons are being suggested. For example, if you look at it from an energetic perspective, investigating for parallels might be quite illuminating…

Anyway, you said in the “Vertical Development” post that this wasn’t about having a political debate, and my original comments in that letter to you were not about getting into the meat of that debate (in which we obviously bring some different perspectives to the table), but about looking at what is being offered by you, energetically, by choosing a certain language and stance. And I will say that for me it comes down to feeling the transmission of any given communication or “packet” of information, and that obviously is not just about content (though content and how it is framed is relevant when your business is ideation). I see your point. I think. I think you are saying you choose such language deliberately, because it gets your message across more effectively. I guess I disagree; I don’t think it is more effective, not in communicating the heart of the message. But maybe that’s because I think you have a message to offer that’s far more important than getting people to shift their thinking about Chavez. (And I think that it’s possible to both shift people’s thinking and offer new content from deeper perspectives, and energetically offer inspiration and invitation to open.) I still think choosing that approach and language perpetuates the energies of closure more than openness. And as silly as those considerations might seem in the context of a conversation on geopolitics, I see them as deeply important.

I haven’t personally experienced any of these groups, but a quick search on http://www.meetup.com found me the Awareness Engineering group in Bellevue. Perhaps you could check them out…

Much love,
Scott

Thank you for the lovely post…

(I used to house sit and clean house for Ursula and her husband Charles. She instructed me that if I was to mop the floor, I ought to do it in the proper fashion, then demonstrated… the proper fashion being tossing a rag down upon the floor, placing one foot upon it, and twisting like so:

She’s also a huge Springsteen fan…)

I couldn’t be better, really. Seattle, writing, playing poker, great friends, new love… my life is as good as it gets right now. Until it gets even better, which it seems to be doing a lot lately.

No point in even trying to talk about everything here… and I’m really happy to hear from you. What are you up to?

Write, call, find me on Facebook, whatever. I’d love to catch up a bit.

Scott

How are you, Scott?

By the way, I spent years getting up before dawn, working for my father in wholesale food distribution, so it’s not like I haven’t done it. I just prefer not to. And I’m also open to changing as I get older. For now, please don’t call me before 10:00 AM PST. :-)