Posts tagged Integral Theory
By Jordan Luftig "As with God, So with Money"—compelling look at #Occupy Movement
Jordan was one of my Professors at JFKU… he has a way of eloquently breaking down, what sometimes appear as conundrums. From loaded subjects like Phenomenology, POST-metaphysics, and the current state of the Occupy Movement.
As with God, So with Money? Luftig reminds us that Modern Revolutionaries dethroned the fear [the “rule”] of God, in its place came Capitalism. Inquisitions, [Monarchies], Holy Wars—the Founding Fathers had enough. In the New World would be free markets, [the demise of serfdom], and the rise of free minds.
There was a total rejection of a system of living—although elements of God and religion remain—but not with the omnipresent oppressive power of late.
Jordon closes the article with a rejoinder to criticisms that the Occupy Movement lacks direction and purpose. As with the Founding Fathers, so with the Millennials (et.al):
The Occupy movement has made a point of operating independent of existing institutions of power because it protests our entire institutionalized way of life. It rejects the materialistic values and the coldhearted, self-interested, you’re-either-a-winner-or-a-loser culture of business, politics, modern life. Period.
That the Occupiers have made no demands has prompted observers to criticize the movement for failing to offer a new vision. The confusion is understandable, and the critics can be forgiven. No demand is big enough for the Occupiers’ intention. The Occupiers envision a true revolution. Their movement has a mission: dethrone the corporate kings of modernity. Give birth to a new, post-modern age of humanity.
This is the real, incredible, unfolding story.
On The 4th Order of Consciousness; How Cultures go Counter & Revolutionize
Cultural sign posts like the on-going “Occupy Wall Street” here in NYC, provide the objective relevancy for this short series of essays I’ve been working on. I think what is going on down there is beyond a protest. It may lack a bullet point agenda, but if the gathering can sustain effectively and safely I think and agenda will come. However, one may not come, and that could also be because of the new territory which the individual is entering. The individual can awaken to time, place, and circumstance but that doesn’t mean they know absolutely what is going on.
It is here in the fourth order of consciousness when all that we have done is revealed. The revelation is of the self and not of otherness. The face of God, as it were, revels in the bliss of knowing its Being—and in that knowing of Beingness, that something has been done, with this turns back to look and indeed. The constant explosive and creative ever-bursting forward is Being.
Being in this fourth order is our moment of reflection. It is the first time we have seen what this is—the construct of culture. In turn subject becomes object of which we hold strict dominion over, and with that a sphere of judgement, and opinion. One might say you become aware, cognizant of Karma. And what are the circumstances that created that Karma? Relationships, gender, ethnicity, history, and today we find the ever-present condition and concern for the ecological environment. However, we are not these things. Although they have all layered us with personality, we can see the psychological conditionings as just that, layered on top of the I who speaks to Douglas.
The fourth order is a very beautiful period of development, for the first time at a deep cognitive level a human no longer lives affected by these conditionings unknowingly, rather they become seeable, graspable, knowable—Object. Yet it is the most challenging level humanity has come to be in. And that is because we can see our psychological sufferings; we can see how prevalent they are, how deep they go in our psyche.
Unlike the third order we now have to make meaning on the fringe or exterior of dominant cultural and societal structures. The meaning-making (the making sense of the developmental qualities of the fourth order); the psychological awareness, are all one activity and constitute the palingenesis into the fifth order of consciousness.
