The Case for an Integral View on Knowledge and Understanding | Enabling Love & Emergence

On bad days I tend to lecture others unfairly instead of enabling them to find their way. This article will serve as a reminder to myself to stop bitching about other people's bullshit beliefs when I see them being recited and when I feel tempted to jump in recklessly to tell everyone how wrong they are.

Prerequisites to insight

On my truth journey so far I had the pleasure of coming across many different viewpoints and degrees of radicality in countless ares of inquiry and understanding. Some people I met kept arguing relentlessly that they had it right and everybody else had it wrong - often to the point that they would feel no need to answer questions or criticisms by other people. I was one of those people once, without realizing it.

It's what happens when we dive so deep into a bubble of anything. Knowledge. A new skill. A previously undiscovered worldview.

As my friend Franky in the Zeitgeist Movement used to say to me repeatedly: "We have to be careful not to look at everything through the movement goggles all the time. People who haven't heard about the things we have internalized will not be able to get what we are saying at all because they are missing too many bits of information, nor will they be particularly interested in listening to our perceived arrogance when they have no frame of reference for what we are discussing. They might get the feeling we are patronizing them."

We all need some gateway in order to find new stuff and let it in: A relevant experience or a set of information that acts as the foundation for the next step in understanding and growing.

We all wear habitual goggles all the time, goggles that color our image of reality in a certain way - until we can find reason to notice them, take them off and show other people their own goggles in an enabling and empathic way. Not with force.

Bashing the first graders

One of the best hacks I came across a few years ago was the idea of integral thinking. Not even sure if the term is 100% accurate, but I find myself using it in this way often, so I shall do the same here. We could also substitute it with "integral understanding".

So, what then is "integral thinking / understanding"?

It's a small and willfull shift in perception that anyone can make in order to drastically change his outlook on life, and how to deal with the people that are seemingly "adversaries" or "enemies" because of their "stupid beliefs". It's a simple idea born out of logic that makes it very unappealing to constantly want to change people or their views on life in a forceful manner.

Integral thinking will stop you from recklessly converting people to your own current dogmas and beliefs.

A great example I often like to give is the dreaded school system we all grew up with. But for this concept it works particularly well as an illustration.

Let's say you are in the tenth grade. You have made friends during the last years, you have had many experiences with teachers who praised you, shamed you, argued with you. You know your way around, you know the do's and don't's of daily school life. By now, you have picked up on the basics of mathematics, on what algebra is or how geometry applies to everyday life when trying to measure whether your grandma's old cupboard fits into the car of your uncle.

In other words: you have experience, you have knowledge under your belt.
High five!

Now imagine the day in late summer when the new kids arrive in school - the first graders. For sake of argument we will assume that all students go to the same school from grade 1 to graduation.

How will these kids be welcomed?

Well, you could say some bully might put a few of them into the garbage bin, in some sort of cruel welcoming ritual. But most students in higher grades will probably look at the newcomers and get a little nostalgic. "Remember back when we first got here? Is it really that long ago? Aren't they cute?"

There is a sense of... leeway that is given to the new and younger kids, because nobody seriously expects them to know anything about school, the curriculum or what exactly is demanded by them on day one. And if we are honest we might remember our own confusion when we first got into school... I know I do.

So why are we talking about school?

Because truthseeking and dealing with other people in society has grand parallels to the situation I just described - it's just that we don't think of it that way when we get into arguments with our fellow man.

Think of something you currently hold to be true, but haven't always subscribed to.

For the sake of example let's say you are a stoner and love to get high on THC - if you don't then this example will be even better! When you first heard about marijuana it might have been in a completely negative context: Stories about how it will end your life quickly, how it will fry your brain in months and how you will never achieve anything great in life should you ever decide to smoke it.

The degrees of exaggeration may vary, but the fear campaign against the herb was (and still is) far-reaching.

And we may have even told our black-sheep friend back in third grade that he "shouldn't smoke this stuff because it would be bad" for him - pretty much blindly regurgitating to him the narrative we had picked up on in order to help him - for his own good, so to speak.

Being naive kids, we really had no reason to doubt this narrative until we may have learnt that it isn't quite as simple or black and white, nor that it is an accurate depiction of what benefits the plant can bring to its user.

A lot of people would argue that it's actually quite the opposite of 'the end of your life'. Some will even argue that it can save your life! And as a stoner, you might be one of them today - through your experiences and wisdom you have collected over the years that led you to that perspective and to eventually drop the common fear-narrative.

Would your advice to people who want to get high still be the same today as it was in third grade? Probably not. You would be able today to differentiate and take a lot more information into consideration when telling other people around you what that plant is and does to the human body and psyche.

BUT... there are still lots of people today who believe that narrative regardless of what you have discovered and learnt!

We are all at different stages of learning about life and all its aspects. But would you automatically shun - say - your neighbor lady (age 82) who still thinks it's the devil's weed?

Probably not.

She just doesn't have the same experiences and information you do. But she may make some awesome pancakes that blow any commercially available product out of the water. And most likely - you can respect that, and choose other people to get high with than that old lady.

So....

Both the school kid example and the old lady example are situations where we can release the expectation from the people around us to know everything we know. Instead we can appreciate their current stage of limited development in this particular area of interest, and cherish them for the other areas they are excelling in or working on.

"Johnny, you have just done your very first subtraction, high five!"

"Mrs. Jackson, this blueberry pancake is just incredibly delicious!"

So if we can let go of the need to criticize their limited knowledge when it comes to calculating the square root of 3721 or knowing anything factual about THC, why can't we do the same thing with everyone else we meet - in any area of knowledge at all? Why do we constantly have to control the path of other people to feel at ease with ourselves?

You mean...? What do you mean?

I mean that the journey you have travelled successfully thus far (in whatever area of inquiry you chose) will be sufficient proof for your ego to stop judging those who have just begun walking a similar path. It will show you that learning is anin cremental process, are that these people are simply yet to come across the insights you have come across on your path, if you have come far. It doesn't make them any less valuable as a human being. Only less compatible to you in your current situation.

To pick up on the early example: If you are a tenth grader you will not criticize the first graders for not knowing what a binomial series is or how you say 'thank you' in French - simply because nobody knows how to do so until he learns about it.

So why do we constantly feel the need as tenth graders to tell the first graders how wrong they are? What do we hope to get out of it?

As an immature kid - maybe street credit ;)

But as discerning adults today there really is no need to argue with worldviews we have long left behind us. Simply because holding these worldviews was a prerequisite - a requirement - to eventually letting them go. And to see through them.

As so often: our language gives the show away.

You can never DE-velop anything, unless it has previously been EN-veloped. De-velopment requires something to be en-veloped first. And while we may have successfully de-veloped aspects of ourselves, other people may still be fully en-veloped in those aspects.

So when I see people arguing about whether Trump is better than Hillary, whether manmade climate change will kill us all, or whether a nuclear conflict is surely headed our way - I try my best to give some pointers but to never tell the little kids how stupid they are for not knowing any better by now.

Pouring the tenth grade concepts on kids in grade one will neither help them, nor will it speed up their process of development. It's like ripping the caterpillar open from the outside to help the butterfly "escape". You will most likely end its life by doing that, no matter how well-meaning you are.

Similarly with human beings, by shoving them your way in insight and knowledge you may keep them from moving on on their own accord, because you force them to defend their questionable view to you when you put them on the spot, which makes them all the more a slave to the concept that wants to be overcome and seen through in a... natural way.

As it has been wisely put:

And since I have fucked this up majorly for years (and still sometimes do) I regularly have to remind myself that there is no need to argue with people who believe in the first grade curriculum to be "The Truth™" when I fully remember how plausible it all seemed to me a few years ago before I found the major catch.

I also have to always remember that despite my assumed certainties NOW, I may also not have the 'right' answer yet. But thinking I do, I go and convert people from one set of fairy-tales to another - with good intentions but with little respect for the integral understanding of the learning process as such.

Which has nothing to do with developing but simply swapping the enveloping for someone else & against their will, which will really make a mess out of it. And even get me to invest more of my mental energy into concepts that are nothing but mindfuck just to explain to the stubborn believers where they have been misled. It will be lots of fruitless pain for both me and my candidate for conversion.

What am I supposed to do with these people then?

I say: relax.

When you hear Bullshit somewhere - things that you have thoroughly taken apart for yourself, as in things that do not hold up to scrutiny - save your moral lecture for people on your own level of progress. Give the first graders pointers if they ask for them, so they may choose to look into these aspects for themselves, but never force your own breakthroughs on them as a form of "objectively available truth everybody ought to know by now".

Even when it's tempting.

They might know about things you cannot even fathom, while they still believe a lie you have left behind consciously decades ago.

Why you may want to try this?

Because it will make a good case to your ego to put your energy elsewhere instead of getting mad about the lack of progress others have made. And to even enjoy debates with people who believe in complete and utter fictions that have not been identified by them as such.

I often hear people speak the greatest insights I have never considered, only to hear them uncritically relay provably false concepts and assumptions in the next sentence that they have never tested for validity nor even considered as candidates for closer inspection. Because they cannot fathom that their most basic notions could turn out to be false. Most of us can't.

Everyone moves at their own pace

If you decide to respect that you will not only be able to forward important puzzle pieces to the first graders efficiently, you will also build a strong bond with them that might utterly reward both of you in the future once they catch up to your level of understanding and awareness or share their insights with you that you had never considered.

Let them play with the alphabet until they are ready for Greek grammar.
And you may write a collaborative book as a team one day that could never have been written by either participant alone.

Ever since learning this lesson the hard way one of my main dogmas for life has become "enable love and emergence". And it's incredibly rewarding whenever I can remember it in situations where worldviews collide and I find myself in the midst of involuntary armies of opposing viewpoints.

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