Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[Biscuits and Gravy]

My overall question is "why do wealthy modernists continue to pursue economic growth when increasing economic growth seems not to satisfy any needs and causes additional problems?" or "why are consumers so resistant to ERE, when we can show them that the work/ consume praxis is providing very little benefit and causing most of their stated problems?"

Oh, I got this. The answer is because the vast majority of people can not, will not, or do not self-examine to the extent where they can actually discern their true needs. And, even if they do manage by some miracle to determine their true needs, they almost certainly are incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to meet those needs and "stop causing problems." The people on this forum are unique in this respect and many other respects. Maybe in addition to your "noble savage" narrative (great response, @ertyu), you overlay what you get out of this forum onto "the real world" and are thereby disappointed in a million ways each day.

I hate to also poop on your rug, but even the term "simpler societies" seems like an oxymoron. A society is by nature complex. And sure, taking a bird's eye view of a society half-way across the world or 10,000 years ago may render it unto your mind as "simpler," but that simplicity can be explained by your dearth of knowledge/intimacy with that society. And, c'mon, lack of inequality? Children had zero rights and were burned alive as sacrifices in many cultures (even the Old Testament admonishes followers from making their children "pass through the fire"), and generally wives were gotten by stealing them from the next tribe over the hill. And, yes, you clearly meant material inequality, and Jacob is gonna roll his eyes at my hair-splitting, but I would much rather suffer modern inequality than prehistoric inequality or even the inequality from 200 years ago.

ETA Upon further reflection, I'd point out that most people on this forum are stoics, or at least have read and respect some stoic teachings. One of the markers of the death of a civilization is that the peoples' dial gets turned from stoicism to epicureanism (think there are way more self-proclaimed "foodies" living on your block than people training for triathlons for funsies). So, with that in mind, your question becomes: "Why are Epicureans so resistant to Stoicism?" Which seems a little silly, right?

[AxelHeyst]

This thread got weird. You guys are dunking on a pair of trousers and coat stuffed with straw.

[suomalainen]

Shame on me for not reading his mind and responding instead to the text. And here I thought he was grappling with finding a truth, and when I point out he is wayward in his search for truth by basing such search on a fiction, I am “weird” and tilting at windmills. I should have known, despite his clear proclamations otherwise, that his “examining” the past was merely a metaphor. Shame on me. Back to remedial logic for me.

[Jean]

Can we just all agree that people that don't wan't to live in paleolithic just do so because they know they wouldn't stand a chance in a big stick wielding contest?

[ertyu]

A bunch of 19th c social philosophy posits a fictional "state of nature" that the current state of affairs can then be judged against.* But idk that one needs all the rigamarole. Yes, one's thoughts make a claim to universality that way, but I'm not sure such universality exists. In the end, all anyone has is, "this is what I need that I find it hard to get due to how where I am, we've got social norms ABCD." @AH, I'm surprised you're reacting strongly here: iirc the basic starting point of Deep Response was, screw making grand plans and theories about saving the world or fixing "society," sort. your. own. ass. out -- the grand unified theories of how we're gonna fix "society" are a psychologically motivated fantasy, and ultimately, a derail.**

*I believe we got it from Christianity: the garden of eden, the imperfect now, heaven - the promised Telos. Workers not alienated from their labor, evil capitalist exploitation, jointly and harmoniously owning the means of production. "Traditional families, mom dad and 2 white kids in a 50s kitchen," evil feminists that "destroyed marriage," "go back to the kitchen." The golden age of the wise greco-romans, the current times of imperfect ignorance, the advanced Future we will reach through Progress and Science. Etcetera. Step 1 is positing an idealized, fictionalized past.

**In case it needs to be said: I'm very much for grass-roots community level solutions; the ideal "fix the world" mix probably oscillates between making fixes inside and making fixes outside through collective action.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Step 1 is positing an idealized, fictionalized past.

Yeah, it’s an extremely successful rhetoric due to its inherent vagueness and man’s propensity for feeling like he’s “had and lost some infinite thing” (David Foster Wallace). Any movement which employs it is buoyed by the followers privately filling in the gaps with their own conceptions/hopes/dreams. I like your suggestion of using it as a tool to identify what exactly we feel like we’re missing from that fictional past and then work to bring that into our lives. Some things, of course, will be impossible, such as convincing the population of a capitalist country to stop consuming. If that’s what JnG’s friction is, I’m not sure what the answer is, other than to self-soothe and let it go.

[7Wannabe5]

Some things, of course, will be impossible, such as convincing the population of a capitalist country to stop consuming. If that’s what JnG’s friction is, I’m not sure what the answer is, other than to self-soothe and let it go.

I feel like I keep referencing guests on Nate Hagen's podcast, but ...his most recent guest, Jean-Marc Jancovici, offered what I thought was a good simplification of the motivations for consumption:

1) Comfort/(Sloth-Gluttony)
2) Accumulation/(Fear-Greed)
3) Status/(Lust-Envy)

His proposed(although granted highly unlikely) solution was that those who already in the upper echelons of society will need to model "sobriete" or "sufficiency" or "alternative means of signaling status" first. I found his breaking out of "accumulation" as a motivation somewhat interesting, because I think it speaks to what I saw as similar behavior pattern whether my old multi-millionaire friend watching CNBC or my young professional dancer niece flipping through fast fashion sites. Jancovici theorizes that the human tendency towards "accumulation' is a very early cultural development of the first early humans who had to survive through winter.

Anyways, I agree in the sense that I don't think that it is possible to transition to "post-consumerism" en masse without also transitioning to "post-capitalism." And what I mean by "post-capitalism" is something not-yet-emergent, but definitely not to be confused with communism or even garden variety socialism. My rough intuition is that although "post-consumerism" will eventually be a human sociology/psychology based movement, it will be dependent upon "post-capitalism" which will likely be dependent upon some form of innovation/technology that quite possibly wasn't even meant to bring about "post-capitalism." And "post-capitalism" will also be a development that still contains the seeds of the core human urges that currently underpin capitalism. Of course, it is also the case that "if everybody did" the "applied capitalism" of ERE, one possible form of "post-capitalism" would emerge. One problem is that "applied" implies "work" and unlikely everybody is going to be down with that, see (1) above.

In simplest terms, a situation in which it was not possible to buy more "comfort" or "status" with money would promote the purchase of "security." A situation in which it was not possible to buy more "status" or "security" would promote the purchase of "comfort." And a situation in which it was not possible to buy more "security" or "comfort" would promote the purchase of "status." And 'security" is likely the hardest nut to crack as an individual, because it requires giving up your fear of death. Although, any human who commits suicide almost certainly found one or both of the other nuts to be harder to crack.

[AxelHeyst]

@AH, I'm surprised you're reacting strongly here: iirc the basic starting point of Deep Response was, screw making grand plans and theories about saving the world or fixing "society," sort. your. own. ass. out -- the grand unified theories of how we're gonna fix "society" are a psychologically motivated fantasy, and ultimately, a derail.**

Pretty close. My main point was that trying to do anything about the state of the world before getting your own house in order is a sequence error, and the results will be bad for you and probably bad for the world despite your best intentions. So, put your own o2 mask on first. Can't build a post-consumer world if your own household runs on consumer logic, because you literally can't think in post-consumer logistics at a high level if you're operating under such a cognitive dissonance load.

After that, I don't make as strong a claim as to what anyone should/should not do. I really just want people to chase stoke, **with a post-consumer foundation**. That's my "free 'em all, let Gaia sort 'em out" notion.

I am certainly leery of grand plans and theories about saving the world or fixing society. There is a disturbing trend in history of people with grand theories doing an incredible amount of harm to other human beings in service of their vision. But studying and thinking about the past, and the future, and developing visions for where society might and could go, generally speaking -- if done well and with great regard for The True and The Good (and now, with my reading of Alexander, also perhaps The Beautiful), I'm a fan of people doing this sort of thing if they're stoked about it.

Anyway, I'm not reacting strongly because I think you guys should like JnG's theories more or that he's right. I'm not trying to defend the specifics of his theories. I'm reacting strongly because I think you're reading his posts very uncharitably and inferring positions that he doesn't hold.

I think he has made some errors in word choice and also he's certainly wrong about a few things here and there. I think it's great that you guys are challenging him on those points, because it'll make his ideas better. The dude just absorbs critical engagement, goes and reads the stack of books people recommend, and comes back and updates his ideas.

But it seems to me that people took some of his missteps and misunderstandings and blew them up into a full-on strong version of the Noble Savage Fallacy, and then started dog-piling. Is he wrong about some stuff? For sure, probably, I'm not well read on all sides of the anthropological research on various pre-modern societies and I don't really have a dog in this fight one way or the other. I'm very pro-dissensus, but strongly anti-people-talking-past-each-other, which is what I think is happening here. I feel strongly about when there are cool ideas to engage with that aren't being engaged with because of what I perceive to be mutual misunderstandings.

When JnG says:

I think the simplest societies lacked alienation because they were forced to interdependently rely on each other for survival. They didn't have to search for their tribe or find community.

And the inline response is:

Another assumption. I love this totally equal egalitarian society with no strife or personal jealousies or anything that you’re imagining. Where can I sign up?

I scratch my head. Where did JnG imply that he thought these societies were totally egalitarian with no strife or personal jealosies? I can't find anywhere in JnGs recent posts where he's claimed that pre-modern societies were better or that they lived charmed lives etc. Comments like this are what make me perceive a big gap in understanding in the conversation. [Of course, maybe I'm the one reading his comments TOO charitably?]

His whole premise is that when pre-modern people's DID experience fear and anxiety, which they no doubt experienced frequently because there was a bunch of legitimately scary shit going on in those days, there was often a clear and present and sensible reason for it: tigers! ostracization (/death)! starving to death! being poked to death with a sharp stick by those assholes over there! And isn't it weird that now in modern times, when we seem to have way less legitimate reasons to be scared about stuff, we seem to be more scared and anxious than we need to be and we do it in weird dysfunctional ways that impact our lives pretty significantly? What's up with that? What does it mean for our own relationship with needs-fulfillment and self-actualization?

Suo started engaging critically with this idea, which was cool, but then the conversation kind of spiraled into a "noble savage fallacy!" dogpile imo. I don't think any of the individual critical posters here are being 'weird' or out of line, I think the conversation as a system phenomenon got weird as an emergent effect.

[ertyu]

Some things, of course, will be impossible, such as convincing the population of a capitalist country to stop consuming.

That's another fiction. Instead it might be better to ask why one wants to do so on a personal level. Safety? Savior complex? Etc. @AH EK'ed his, iirc - i believe i read something in his journal. The point of this, of course, isn't to stop being anti-consumerist, but rather to come at it from a place where one isn't acting stuff out, consciously or not.

[AxelHeyst]

Yeah, I'd realized a lot of my motivations regarding doing sustainability etc work was mixed up my gut-level aversion to how offensively poorly the modern world is 'designed' and my own feelings of internalized guilt and shame. So I had a bunch of fear and hate mixed in with my supposedly "The Good" motivations to 'help' the world. A great way to realize unintended consequences via my work and operate with huge blind spots, resulting in even worse effects/design that I started out averse to in the first place. I've done a lot of work to daylight and 'deal with' all that so I can operate from a stoke-centric (love and curiosity) stance instead.

[jacob]

Oh, I got this. The answer is because the vast majority of people can not, will not, or do not self-examine to the extent where they can actually discern their true needs. And, even if they do manage by some miracle to determine their true needs, they almost certainly are incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to meet those needs and "stop causing problems." The people on this forum are unique in this respect and many other respects. Maybe in addition to your "noble savage" narrative (great response, @ertyu), you overlay what you get out of this forum onto "the real world" and are thereby disappointed in a million ways each day.

I'm pretty sure this is the correct explanation or at least this is my operating model for comprehending humanity. My only exception is that it doesn't apply to the vast majority, but of course this depends on what you mean by vast. I'd say at least 75%, but less than 90%. The typical goal of education and parenting [in the modern world] is to acquire sufficient mental capacity and emotional self-control to be able to function semi-independently within a mostly set framework of the social environment. The school system spends a good 12 years achieving this.

One of the things that keep people from actually discerning is how this system actively suppresses the very idea that there's something to discern. In particular, the idea that practically all adults reach this goal by age 18 or so with little difference after is a big reason why the majority are neither capable, nor willing to make changes---why look if one is convinced there's nothing to look for or that the only place to investigate is inside this "conformal box".

Plato's Cave remains extremely astute. Note that most of the prisoners are alright with staying exactly where they are. The reason is that they don't see the chains and that it never occurs to them to turn their heads.

Consider where the median person ends up in terms of IQ, Kegan, Cook-Greuter, ... and it's pretty clear that not only is there lacking capability for looking further, but more importantly, there's no interest. In particular, any can kind of "felt unhappiness" can easily be explained within the conformal box, e.g. "not making enough money", "not getting that promotion", "blaming 'others' for personal failings", ...

Modernity is in other ways a system that fits the majority of people, where they currently are.

That said, modernity is not a system that fits people where they were in more traditional societies. It took a tremendous amount of "education" to get humans to a point where they're willingly show up for 8-10 hours per day doing the same work month after month with few breaks in exchange not just for food and shelter but --- to continue the treadmill --- stuff in pursuit of status (Bernays) and perhaps lately just novelty entertainment .

Traditionally, the IQ, Kegan, Cook-Greuter coordinates were not sufficient for industrial scale full-time labor. Likewise, the standard parenting/schooling is not sufficient for the 1-sigma middle of the industrially educated Gaussian to grasp or want to grasp anything beyond an industrial society.

[philipreal]

Consider where the median person ends up in terms of IQ, Kegan, Cook-Greuter, ... and it's pretty clear that not only is there capability for looking further, but more importantly, there's no interest.

Is the above quote your intent, or did you mean to say "pretty clear that not only is there not capability for looking further"? The way the sentence is set up and the broader post seem to imply the latter to me, but I could potentially see either one.

[jacob]

Yeah, I fixed it.

[jacob]

If I may speculate ... I think everybody has some "internally driven" goal of insight where they'll do their own pushing(*) if this is not met. For example, while I think the unitive stage sounds cool and all, I'm clearly not sufficiently motivated to pursue it. Conversely, give me a book on organizational theory or strategic concepts and I'll eat it up. Thus I'm something in between those two ...

Now, the thing with modern[ist] schooling is that this is likely already beyond the average goal point of the human genotype. Note how the majority of students have to be dragged higher than they really want to from a fairly early age (7-9 or so, I'd say). Younger than that, they're learning machines. Older, it's like pulling teeth with much of the class rather wanting to be elsewhere if they had a choice. Consider that back when the world was less politically correct, it was asserted that the average adult had the mental age of a 13 year old. I frankly don't think this is too far off the mark.

(*) And this is facilitated or hampered by access to learning materials/people or the lack there of. The internet has certainly made a huge difference in that regard. It's an order of magnitude harder to develop ideas on your own than to understand (and internalize) ideas developed by others.

[daylen]

Sometimes the shaman instinct kicks in to try and help people move to a different valley when all other options are perceived as likely to fail.

[7Wannabe5]

the thing with modern[ist] schooling is that this is likely already beyond the average goal point of the human genotype.

"You told us to just learn how to program. Now you learn how to work a shovel." -Internet bathroom wall, 2025.

It's an order of magnitude harder to develop ideas on your own than to understand (and internalize) ideas developed by others.

Yes, but if there is ultimately nowhere to go besides Unitive and Beyond*, does it really matter how many humans conceive of "original" thoughts at any "lower" level? Although, "no thought is truly original" is a Post-Modern concept, so maybe at Meta-Modern, it's more like, "Yes, but some thoughts are more original than others." Then at Unitive, maybe it's like you are looking at the entire field of ideas from above and considering "originality" among other qualities and inventing a word that means something like "density of originality over flow of mindful-utility."

*Which seems boring to me as an ENTP, like if Unitive was some bland Star Trek Utopia, I'd rather wander around in the sewers underneath, or be the chubby white trash teenage girl who works for minimum wage washing the towels at the Meditation Center in the Woods and fucks the muscular Guatemalan dishwasher on top of the dryer**.

**Of course, Ken Wilber would suggest that such sexual imagery is just indicative of my to-be-expected reversion to Level Red at the cusp of Post-Modern and Meta-Modern, to which I might reply that it is going to take a heck of a lot of heavy theory and herbal hallucinogens to make me rise to alternative fantasy featuring skinny old massage guy.

[jacob]

Yes, but if there is ultimately nowhere to go besides Unitive and Beyond*, does it really matter how many humans conceive of "original" thoughts at any "lower" level?

Kinda depends on whether the goal is to turn into humankind into ants or cogs in a machine or something else. For ERE (WL7), the ability to conceive "original thought" is crucial for coming up with solutions that doesn't involve "buying a product" or "sacrificing use"---this is also why so many muggles simply don't get it.

One of the brilliant ( ) concepts of modernism is that it allows a brilliant few to do most of all of the thinking for the many and leave the many to just push buttons and fill out existing forms, repeating an action that somebody else already figured out. Modernity is essentially the philosophy of chopping up knowledge into "repeatable and reliable" chunks so that a typical person only has to deal with one chunk at a time. ERE is putting it all back together again.

Likely chatGPT will do the same chopping for the masses when it comes to the ability to think. Education is already "polluted" by students who don't care to read the book or use their own brain to pull together any conclusions. Why bother when they can just ask the chat for a summary and a brief conclusion? Google created a generation that no longer had to know the answers but just knew how to ask. chatGPT will likely change many brains in the same way when it comes to making conclusions. Most people will just punt and default to "chatGPT says ...".

A viable society in that regard would be that of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Idiocracy, the movie, has often been hailed for its astounding ability to predict the future (which is already now). We never did see the Morlocks in that movie, but they must have been there. I'm looking forward to Mike Judge making the "Idiocracy - The Morlocks" movie.

[bookworm]

*like if Unitive was some bland Star Trek Utopia, I'd rather wander...

I don't think it's only that, and you could be embodied as sewer creature and teenage girl while in unitive. That could be two forms to assume among many possibilities in the game.

Point on Ken Wilber is well taken. Trying to think critically about how he is exploring these things and what the limitations/blindspots are.

Edit: Ken Wilber now wears a wig, at least based on recent interview. Not sure if this changes your decision matrix @7. Perhaps this relates to jacob's point on Fi.
Edit 2: Disregard above point on Fi based on jacob's correction below. I will need to review the math on PolR and blindside.

[jacob]

Point on Ken Wilber is well taken. Trying to think critically about how he is exploring these things and what the limitations/blindspots are.

For starters, he's an INFJ (NiFeTiSe) which [strongly] suggests why his AQAL framework is organized and ranked the way it is---basically with Se at the bottom and Ni at the highest stages.

Edit/Correction: The blindspot of an INFJ is Te which is what drives succinct explanations and/or logical coherence. Case in point: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality could probably have been a bit ... shorter.

[7Wannabe5]

For ERE (WL7), the ability to conceive "original thought" is crucial for coming up with solutions that doesn't involve "buying a product" or "sacrificing use"-

Okay, gotcha. Not "Original Thought" with a big O, just "original thought" with a small o. Yes, I agree. In order to do this, the ability to break down into components or "ingredients" is necessary, and one essential collection of "ingredients" would be "core aspects of human psychology", obviously inclusive of possible consideration of evolutionary heritage of their development. For example, small humans often have a psychological desire for "places to hide" as part of their play which could be fulfilled with purchase of $79.99 kiddie tent or blanket tossed over kitchen table.

I don't think it's only that, and you could be embodied as sewer creature and teenage girl while in unitive. That could be two forms to assume among many possibilities in the game.

Yes, this is true. However, there remains the "danger" of lapsing into pre/post fallacy. How self-aware are you? How self-aware are your playmates?

Point on Ken Wilber is well taken. Trying to think critically about how he is exploring these things and what the limitations/blindspots are.

Edit: Ken Wilber now wears a wig, at least based on recent interview. Not sure if this changes your decision matrix @7. Perhaps this relates to jacob's point on Fi.

Don't get me wrong, I like Wilber. I largely believe that his outlook is coherent, and I find it interesting. My perspective is that of a grouchy older female who has read books on Integral Theory, and how it applies to sex and relationships, written mostly by men (Wilber, Deida, Ucik) who are in the age range/generation (Boomers) of the men she has dated throughout her life, and found herself somewhat/somehow annoyed.

This has little to do with how conventionally attractive Ken Wilber is vibing currently. I find his wig rather amusing, not unlike Harry Styles wearing his grandmother's pearl necklace, although certainly not as successfully carried off. It might have more to do with the aspect of my social/sexual functioning which is maybe still centered in Sex in the City Style Modern. I mean, it has not infrequently happened that I am drinking coffee with two female friends, one of whom is currently having sex with muscular guy recently immigrated from Iraq, while the other is currently hitting it with polyamorous master of tantric sex. Actually, now that I attempt to verbalize it, I think maybe what is missing in Wilber/Deida/Ucik is towards how women can have fun in their masculine energy with each other when men aren't around. The men are the ones who need to be more "warm hug circle" with each other in alignment with what Jin+Guice is writing. Or something like that.

Basically, the vibe I get from my reading is that it would be less fun and maybe a little bit creepy for me to be in an Integral Relationship, so I am under-motivated. Also, I have already spent too much time in strongly-polarized erotic-haze-state. I am done with the wandering-around-super-relaxed-in-a-robe-all-day-eating-fruit life which is basically where you are going to find yourself as a female (or one who identifies with core feminine energy) if you read/follow Level Turquoise gurus.

ETA: Duh, now I got it. What annoys me is that these books are mostly towards men finding more freedom and more love, and they are also towards women finding more love, but they are not so much about women finding more freedom. IOW, they poke my "It's not yet safe to be post-feminist." button.