a mystical möbius — curating facts, ideas, text, and media to create a contemplative space.

Online-Integralists …a train wreck [TW]?

So, yeah! I’d say a lack of integrity is a TW, and pretty ironic, too! Please allow me to explain.

In last week’s missive, I, again, challenged this claim attributed to Ken Wilber [kw]—note, the “it” being discussed is systemic racism. So, kw is quoted:

“The people who say it doesn’t exist and the people who say it is absolutely everywhere are both right.” —Corey DeVos quoting kw …[video receipt—queued to the spot]

Pre-publication Facebook teaser

To prepare the seedbed for my missive last week, I had posted a related provocation to one of the online-Integral communities on TheFacebook. I wrote this over the meme:

Those who recognize that this remark by kw is some seriously dangerous bullshit, please raise your hand.

“Integral providing a BS fig-leaf of perspectival relativism is no bueno.” [from “Irony: *Integral* ghetto”]

With mutually exclusive claims, the statement is self-evidently absurd. The post generated some discussion, but mostly just sparked dogmatic knee-jerks. I’ll come back to that.

Then, last Monday, after last week’s a mystical möbius missive was published [Sunday, 12/5/21], there came an unfortunate turn in the discussion on my meme post. The good news is, it affords me an opportunity to do some clarifying of the points I made rather tersely last week.

Now, sadly, goalposts are on the move

So, Monday, the language of the discussion magically changed. Wait! What?!

Well, Corey DeVos wrote a comment that took a generous amount of his time, I imagine, hoping to add clarity. Though the text was lengthy, the reasoning was faulty.

Unfortunately, I feel the discussion then took a turn away from good faith. Again, allow me to explain.

In response to his blog-length comment, I asked:

So, the statement that you said kw “nailed it” on is composed of two mutually exclusive claims and the declaration that people who declare both are ‘right.’ Obviously, on the face of it, it’s nonsense.

DeVos replied:

So for me, the two statements “systemic racism is everywhere” and “systemic racism is not everywhere” are not mutually-exclusive, because it completely depends on what you mean by “systemic racism”.

His lengthy responses indicate to me that sufficient thought had been applied so that he was fully aware of what he was doing there, or should I say, awkwardly attempting. This is the point at which bad faith entered the conversation. It seems to me that *Integral* without integrity has a naked problem, truly.

—I mean, “systemic racism is not everywhere” has no interchangeability with “systemic racism does not exist.” That’s gaslighting.

I think it must have finally occurred to DeVos that his reasoning was faulty, and the attempted language-change testifies to that.

Argument from phenomenology

So, now DeVos enters a narrow ghetto of philosophical overreach on which to try to salvage coherence.

In DeVos’s explainer-comment with the rectified language we meet four persons: A, B, C, and D. These persons each have their own perspective. However, what DeVos apparently fails to appreciate is that none of these perspectives on their own is sufficient to provide a justification/warrant for saying anything universal about systemic racism — claims like it “doesn’t exist,” for instance.

DeVos’s revised language, “systemic racism is everywhere” and “systemic racism is not everywhere,” does relieve the mutually-exclusive-claims absurdity problem. However, for these past seventeen months I’ve been dealing with a completely different statement, i.e., what was said in the quote: “doesn’t exist.” Besides, to affirm the denial of systemic racism is absurd in itself.

So, we’re left with the absurd statement that has two mutually exclusive claims which are allegedly “both right” — i.e., Integral dogma.

Not interesting

Whether kw actually said that, or something like it, is not interesting.

Whether Corey DeVos misquoted or misused what kw said is not really interesting — except maybe the doubling-down-in defense part, what with the awkward, not-so-subtle-effort to rectify the absurd claim.

What is interesting

There’s more to the “train wreck”

What’s currently of interest to me is the willingness of many online-*Integralists* to rush in and defend the absurd. I created a provocation meme as seedbed-prep for this 12/12/2021 missive:

I’ve observed that many of the comments that folks in the online-*Integral* communities have made in the context of the stadial theory discussion suggest that ‘they drank the Kool-Aid‘ [dogmatic Integral], and even when it’s “absurd,” if kw said it, then the online-Integral-dogmatists will find a way to defend it… often with little more than what amounts to arrogant condescension (e.g., paintballing, gaslighting).

tl;dr

For most of my adult lifetime Christianity and Christians have been collectively judged in the public square on the basis of the often-problematic words/actions of our fundies. If my polemic seems to conflate all Integral devotees with Integral fundies, my apologies; please pardon, that wasn’t my intention.

All systematics have problems, and Integral is certainly no exception. However, Integral’s biggest problems are its far over-represented fundies and its online communities. .o2