DocWatts

Excellent post. My own take is that this is instinctively tied to the innate drive within humans to construct meaning. In order to do so, a nomological order is required to make sense of and ground our experiences in an intersubjective world. My view on Stage models and meta-cognitive modalities is that they're modern attempts to construct a nomological order that's more truthful and more relevant compared to some of its predecessors (such as Abrahamic religions, scientific materialism, and postmodern relativism). There are limits to this way of understanding and relating to the world, as there are for every nomological order. While at the end of the day it's still just one of many valid perspectives (rather than a 'correct' view of reality), I'd argue that it's an admirable attempt to construct a nomological order that can meet people's needs in our modern era.

Considering that legislative institutions within the US operate on a form of legalized bribery known as Lobbying, the US is a good case study of how unregulated Capitalism eats democracy by capturing political institutions. The makeup of the US Senate is highly undemocratic, with California (containing 40 million people) and Wyoming (containing 600k) each getting the same amount of Representation in the Senate. Washington DC and Puerto Rico don't get any representation at all (aside from purely symbolic representation that can't vote), because they aren't States. So as bad as things have gotten within the US, it was already a pretty flawed democracy. Demagogues like Trump wouldn't have been as successful in destabilizing political institutions if democracy within the US had been in a healthy place beforehand.

I find it hilarious that conservative leaning people are happy to become caricatures of a postmodern relativist when it comes to truth claims around Covid and vaccines, despite being hostile to postmodern relativism in most other areas. 'One view is as good as any other' isn't actually a defensible epistemological position. Rather it's a misuse of skepticism.

I've listened to his podcast for close to eight years, and the quality of his show has dropped considerably since Rogan moved to Texas, as his show has become an echo chamber for conspiracy theories and for the far right. Since I'm not holding out any hope that he'll stop platforming people with dangerously misinformed views, the best I could hope for is that he'll at least take seriously the suggestion to go back to talking to people with diverse viewpoints. This is the same guy who had Cornell West, Abbie Martin, David Pakman, and Bernie Sanders on his podcast in the past, and his show wasn't always the echo chamber it's become over the past few years.

I think the utility of Ken Wilber's ideas is considerably amplified if you already have a pre-existing knowledge base of philosophical and metaphysical ideas to build off from. The main benefit I found from Wilber is the way his work was able to recontextualize and integrate the way I thought about things like postmodernism, German Idealism, Eastern philosophy, etc. I don't see Wilber's work being of much value to someone who's not already literate in at least the basics of world history, philosophy, epistemology, and science. That would be like handing a complicated philosophical work like The Phenomenology of Spirit to an 18 year old whose main concerns are finding a job and getting laid, and expecting them to parse out how 19th century philosophy is relavant to thier current situation.

That's actually quite helpful, as I haven't really seen the above point framed in a direct way (though that could because I haven't been looking in the correct places).

( Mods: could you please move this to the Self-Actualizion section ) Ken Wilber mentioned that not being able to account for the eventual entropic Heat Death of the Universe is in part responsible for the paradigm shift away from the 19th century German Idealists (well that and not having a methodology such as meditation to verify thier claims). The second law of thermodynamics may well be the most widely validated principle in all of science. It states that the level of disorder in a closed thermodynamic system will always increase over time, until it inevitably reaches an equilibrium state where no energy or information exchanges can take place. It's the reason why hot air moves in to a cold room, and why perpetual motion machines don't work. In order for a metaphysics to be plausible, at the very least it should be consistent with what we observe about how Reality behaves, regardless of what the being of that Reality is. Similiar to how an ontological model that doesn't allow for evolution or for subjective experience should be thought of as implausible, the same should be true for not accounting for the implications of entropy. So why is this even an issue? The issue is that this posits a finite (though still vast) lifespan where information and energy exchanges can take place in nature, which runs contrary to most forms of Idealism. I've yet to find an adequate accounting of this aspect of nature in Idealism, which tends to either completely ignore it or handwave it away. Regardless of whether things like atoms and time actually exist, Reality behaves as if they exist, even if the basis for those things are mental rather than physical. Likewise, Reality behaves as if the laws of thermodynamics exist, regardless of if thermodynamics is just the extrinsic appearance of trans-personal mental processes. This isn't a sneaky argument in favor of physicalism so much as a challenge for Idealism to come up with an adequate and satisfying answer to.

I'm quite familiar with Metamodernism, and I would guess that a large number of the people active on this Forum are familiar with it as well. Broadly speaking, Metamodernism refers to the cultural paradigm that arises after postmodern deconstruction. It can be seen as a synthesis of modernism and postmodernism, transcending and including both. Once postmodernism has done its job of deconstructing what's stupid and hypocritical, it leaves a meaning vacuum which in the arts can be seen in postmodern irony and cynicism (ie: "how dare you have the audacity to ask me what it is I really mean?"). Grand searches for meaning tend to be met with ridicule under postmodernism, because they've been misused as self serving ways to oppress and exploit others. Metamodernism on the other hand takes meaning seriously again, but does so from a far more informed and sincere perspective, using the insights gained from postmodernism (that narratives are culturally constructed and contextual). Going back to the arts, Metamodernism will often employ sincere irony to elucidate truths by juxtaposing sincerity with surrealist or comedic elements. A show like Bojack Horseman is a great example of a Metamodern show, because the show uses a ludicrous framing device (the main character is a talking narcissistic horse person), and uses that framing device to explore serious issues such as trauma and substance abuse in an informed, sincere, and non-pretentious way.

That's of course assuming that continued disregard of ecological constraints doesn't result in a stagnation (or decline) of living standards before this point.

I thought it was generally understood that socialism would by necessity have to be built atop the scientific and Industrial base developed by Capitalism? Someone like Marx was pretty explicit about this point, that Capitalism was a necessary stage of societal development that can't be skipped. Similar to how Capitalism was built atop Mercantilism, and Mercantilism was built atop a Feudal system. You could also point out how much of a distortion it is that a $100 McDonalds burger is priced at $1 under capitalism, and how strange it is that this peculiar system is taken for granted as the 'default' due to social conditioning

My own view is that Spiral Dynamics is much better used as a sociological model for looking at the interplay of how value systems arise, interact, and come in to conflict with one another. While it can be made applicable for individuals by giving a rough approximation of what sort of value system(s) they subscribe to, I would argue that this isn't the model's main strength. Just knowing that two individuals have a center of gravity at Blue for instance doesn't tell you a whole lot about them, since Spiral Dynamics merges several different lines of development (cognitive, ethical, spiritual, etc) down to a single axis as part of its reduction base. At best it can tell you what aspects of the collective value systems that are out there that a person has internalized, but it doesn't really tell you the depth or complexity of that individual's understanding within that paradigm. For instance, Marcus Aurelius and George W. Bush are both roughly at Blue, but are worlds apart as far as the depth and complexity of thier understanding of Reality If you're looking for a personal development model, you'd probably be better off using something like Suzanne Cook Greuter's Stages of Ego Development model. Or if you're looking for a model with a large body of emperical validation, then the Big Five Personality Traits model.

Where I live in the United States, the center of gravity shift towards Green is looking to be incredibly rocky and drawn out. I can't say I'm very optimistic about the political situation in the United States, as I foresee a sizeable chunk of my adult life being played out against the backdrop of trying to forestall the collapse of democracy. That said, it seems likely that things will be better for future generations, and what we're going though right now are growing pains. I'm far more optimistic about my personal situation, so I guess it depends on what I choose to focus on.

After listening to the whole segment, it appears I was missing some context. And yeah, what you're saying is correct. I should try to be more mindful that the majority of people have a very poor understanding of even recent history, as the idea of someone not comprehending that the basics of Nazi ideology baffles me sometimes, before reminding myself that basic historical literacy is a type of privledge....

Susan Cook Greuter's Stages of Ego Development for a hierarchical stage model better suited to individual development. And the Big Five Personality Traits for a model that has the most emperical validation and credibility in the scientific community

I agree with an earlier comment that Spiral Dynamics is much better used as a sociological model rather than as an individual actualization model (where much better options exist). I'd be curious what psychological and emotional needs that Christianity fulfills better for these individuals than New Age belief systems. I'm an outsider to Christianity myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if the sense of community from being part of a Church wasn't a big part of it.

Yeah it seems pretty clear to me that she misspoke by wording the point she was trying to get at somewhat poorly, rather than trying to convey anything malicious (quite the opposite in fact).

I don't want Joe Rogan to get canceled, but I'm glad he's getting a ton of shit for using his podcast in such a flagrantly irresponsible way. I'd be okay with JRE episodes that spread misinformation about Covid getting de-listed from Spotify (so that Rogan would have to find alternative ways of getting those episodes out, were he determined to do so). Similiar how to you can find porn if you go out of your way, but you can't find it on YouTube. Rogan might call himself 'just' a comedian, but when you have 20 million people who take your opinion on these matters seriously (regardless if many of those people are morons), you don't get to use that excuse anymore. Back in the 2000s and 2010s John Stewart tried playing that card that he was 'just' a comedian, despite the fact that The Daily Show was being used as a primary news source for tens of millions of people. If it rung hollow for John Stewart (who was much more responsible about how he used his media platform), it should ring hollow for Joe Rogan. Pointing out that for profit media conglomerates are also problematic is a case of 'what about-ism', that doesn't change anything about the deserved criticism that Rogan's been receiving. Also, do 'all' voices need to be heard? Does that include cigarette companies advertising to children? How about fascist propaganda that motivates individuals to commit hate crimes against their fellow citizens? Or does the notion of 'personal responsibility' not extend to how individuals choose to use their freedom of speech, even in instances where it causes lasting harm to other people?

MSNBC is a corporate organization, so keep in mind that there's a profit motive at work there. Consequently its this structure as a for-profit organization, rather than hysteria about an imaginary 'liberal bias' from Bad Actors on the far right, that's actually worth being concerned about and keeping in mind. I'd recommend The Associated Press for direct reporting of events. And The Conversation as a possible alternative for high quality, complex news analysis that's non-partisian and not tainted by a profit motive. Vox isn't bad either, they're open about the fact that they're a Left leaning news organization, but they provide high quality news analysis and aren't run as a for profit organization. I'd stay clear of Young Turks, they tend to fall in to many of the same pitfalls as large corporate media (such as sensationalism), since they're reliant upon YouTube clicks to keep the lights on.

Science can tell you how nature behaves, but not what nature is. Quantum mechanics and relativity theory still work regardless of whether the substrate of Reality is physical, mental, or something else. Idealism isn't a threat to science, it only appears to be a threat to those that conflate science with ontological assumptions inherent to materialism.

That's it precisely. Thomas Kuhn was quite persuasive about this overall point in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Investigation never begins from a 'neutral' perspective, what sort of problems are investigated are always guided by a pre-existing paradigm (whether one is strictly within that paradigm or pushing against it, it serves as an anchor point in either case). What often happens is that a revolutionary scientist will have an intuition that they develop into a theoretical framework, and this can happen before they have emperical data to validate thier claim For example, emperical proof of general relativity came years after Einstein developed his theory, carried out by scientists in Russia observing light bending around the moon during an eclipse, precisely as Einstein's theory predicted. In the case of Graves, my guess is that he had a pre-existing intuition that the hierarchical process of adolescent development that Piaget described continued in to adulthood, which gave him a framework to begin gathering evidence. And at some point (perhaps from his collaboration with Don Beck, or perhaps before this), that there was a further intuition that adult development had something interesting or important to day about collective psychological development for societies. The reason I brought up Hegel and Marx earlier is that both sought to identify and articulate a broader meta-paradigm via a dialectical framework, with Spiral Dynamics being a more modern attempt at such, with the added benefit of Spiral Dynamics having access to a more rigourous emperical method for grounding its claims than earlier attempts.

I guess that my own view is that empiricism is always going to run up against limitations when it's trying to model something that's inherently qualitative in nature, namely that of internal value systems. In order for a model like Spiral Dynamics to work, I would argue that its body of emperical evidence would have to be situated within something like an intuitive dialectical framework in order to be useful.

While Spiral Dynamics does use scientific evidence to inform and give credibility to its claims (and has been successfully used in places like South Africa), I would argue that its true strength is more akin to something like Hegelian dielectrics, or Marx's theory of alienated labor. In that it's more useful as a framework for re-contextualizing a particular set of problems in a systematic, meta-textual way.

@Abc109 I think the problem is the way that the issue is being framed: that there's two narratives, a 'mainstream' narrative, and a counter (conspiracy) narrative. And that the truth is somewhere in between these two. The problem is that framing it in this way is that it gives the false impression that experts are roughly 'evenly split' between the two narratives. Fossil fuel companies for instance used exactly this tactic to disinform the public on climate change, by creating a false impression that there was broad disagreement among climate scientists and the issue was largely unsettled. Cigarette companies used basically the same tactics to disinform the public about thier products. Rather, a less misleading way to frame it would be that for something like vaccines or climate change, %99 of professionals in that field are in agreement on the 'mainstream' narrative, and %1 of thier colleagues have a counter narrative that they're promoting.

Worth pointing out, and this is just my personal experience, but the individuals that I've known who've fallen in to a conspiracy rabbit hole have tended to have serious unmet deficiency needs (such as a failing marriage, poor health, a terrible and unfulfilling job, etc). Or just more generally they were people who were in want of a purpose in life. While this could be just a sampling bias from the individuals of my various social circles, my intuition is that this speaks to society not having enough outlets for people to build meaning in thier lives. In want of healthy outlets for individuals to find meaning and community, should we be surprised that a society plagued by widespread alienation, cynicism, and loneliness is also one where pathological ways of finding these things are as common as they are?

I'm gonna guess it's probably in the ballpark of something like a Ted talk, which has a ticket price of around $5,000. Difference being that Jordy's audience doesn't consist of highly affluent socialites and entrepreneurs, so much as young men with access to YouTube...