Neo-Integrative Worldviews

* Article: The rise of neo-integrative worldviews Towards a rational spirituality for the coming planetary civilization? By Roland Benedikter and Markus Molz.

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Description

"This chapter provides an introductory overview of contemporary developments in the field of worldviews related to neo-integrative efforts. The current constellation in the European-Western hemisphere is witnessing a significant increase in ‘spiritually’ informed paradigms that claim to be at the same time ‘rational’. Though these paradigms sometimes deploy ambiguous concepts of ‘spirituality’ and ‘rationality’, have very diverse features, are not infrequently opposed to each other and are of varying quality, their common core aspiration can be said to be, in the majority of cases, integrative, inclusive and integral. These terms imply an attempt to reconcile spirituality and rationality, transcendence and secularism, as well as ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’, with the goal of building a more balanced worldview at the heart of Western civilization than the ones we have had so far, which have by and large been biased either towards secular nominalism, on the one hand, or religious transcendentalism on the other. To put the current attempts at and developments toward integrative worldviews into perspective, this text first lists some of the most important features of the current worldview constellation in the Western hemisphere; second, problematizes some of the paradigmatic attempts towards integrative, inclusive or integral thought of the present, including some transitional movements between the late 1960s and today; and third, outlines a view of some of the currently most influential tendencies and trajectories towards integral worldviews, i.e. towards the conciliation of rationality and spirituality. The result of our critical investigation of this topic is that, if deployed appropriately, i.e. in full accordance with the rules set by contemporary academic scrutiny, integrative worldviews may provide at least potentially useful ‘layers of stratification’ (Thomas Fararo) as tools complementary to the ones we have in mainstream science and culture, in order to facilitate the build up of a more balanced civilizational paradigm appropriate to the needs of the upcoming first ‘planetary civilization’ (Michiko Kaku, Jennifer Gidley). Adapted to the bigger picture of the pressing questions of today, neo-integrative worldviews may potentially contribute (self-)critical blueprints for dealing inclusively with some of the most important challenges of our time."

Excerpts

Four Challenges for Neo-Integrative Worldviews

Roland Benedikter et al. :

"As seen through the lens of the majority of recent attempts at a neo-integrative worldview, these challenges consist, in more detail, of the following.

(1) A ‘philosophical’ mood that is leading to a specific contemporary cultural psychology of proto-integral transition. This psychology can be described as, so to speak, Immanuel Kant’s ‘antinomy of pure reason’ pushed into extreme forms of ‘unifying diversity’ under contemporary radically pluralistic conditions: if everything can be judged from very different viewpoints that are in principle equally valid and legitimated (as in Kant’s law of perfect antinomy), and therefore if everything becomes indistinguishable as it is impossible to decide between the paradigmatically available benchmarks, because everything is equally valid and legitimate, then a proto-integrative or even pre-integral situation is already factually created. This is because, within this situation, a balance between conflicting viewpoints becomes necessary to save the principle of equality, and thus the system as such.

This is a core mood within the present zeitgeist, which precisely denotes that this zeitgeist is already moving beyond postmodernism– which stipulated that no integrative picture whatsoever was possible anywhere beyond Kant’s antinomy.

In fact, the zeitgeist of the present is already moving beyond this verdict.

(2) A rapidly growing insight into the intense intertwinement of the societal ‘software’ factors of political, cultural, spiritual and religious typologies of discourse which are synchronically present in mature modern societies. This consists, more generally, in a new multi-dimensionality– or ‘constituent patchwork mind-set’ – in the public application of their respective system logics. The specific contemporary challenge further consists in:

(3) The growing impact of the societal ‘hardware’ factors of demography and technology on the (structurally differentiated) rationality of ‘open’52 Western societies on micro-, meso- and macro-levels alike. This is meant in the sense that, while the discourse of demography is unleashing increasing effects on the on-going hybridization of public discourses and identities53 due to its capacity to ‘neutralize’ opposing patterns of cultural and religious confrontation, the discourse of technological progress is characterized by an increasing dichotomy, if not by a new constitutive dialectics, between ‘old mechanistic technologies’ and ‘new liberation technologies’.54 This dichotomy seems, at least to a certain extent, to be in process of shaping the role of technology in postindustrial societies, especially when compared with its social role and impact in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among other aspects, unlike their predecessors, contemporary liberation technologies are trying to contribute to the development of an open-source society within and beyond the current mediatic attention economy, dedicated to more integrative and balanced development, production, distribution and application of technological knowledge for– and in the service of– the large majority of citizens, instead of privileging the elites.

(4) Taken together, the specific combination of these software and hardware factors of contemporary paradigm development seems to be creating, as one result of their hitherto unprecedented intertwinement, a new structural pluri-dimensionality of what has been called the sphere of ‘public reason’ (according to the connotations of this term established by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas56). This new pluri-dimensionality is not predominantly occasional (or contextual); it is beginning to create de facto not only ontological but also systemic effects. Among other things, the public reason of Western societies, in contrast to the 1980s and 1990s, today privileges plurality, decentralization and diversity at all levels of social organization and action, while protecting some core principles of coherence such as justice, individual and collective rights and equal access to the features of the system as integrative features for all citizens. Simplifying a little, we could say that the public reason of the West is today concerned with the acceptance of radical pluralism in all its forms and stages of development while still, as a consequence, adhering to the principles established by the French Revolution: freedom, equality, fraternity. The alleged maturity of this public reason does not reside in one aspect or the other, but precisely in its capacity to combine both. Doubtless this capacity is still not integral in the full sense, but its trajectory is certainly towards becoming integral."

The macro-ideological and sociocultural battles typical of our epoch

Markus Molz et al. :

The macro-ideological and sociocultural battles typical of our epoch, which form their historical background and context. Some of those battles are listed below.

First, there is growing competition between different models of modernity on a Western and on a global scale alike. It seems we are beginning tolive in an epoch of ‘contested modernities’.

This new notion describes a striking new competitiveness between differing, sometimes opposed, meso- and macro-concepts of what the good life (individually and collectively) can be in its basic blueprints and in principle, and which societal forms of organization are the most appropriate to achieve it. The competition is currently taking place mainly between Western and newly arising Eastern powers such as China. The latter have their own concepts of modernity and the good society, which are not concordant with their Western counterparts. Many of the Eastern powers are particularly keen to develop their own cultural models and modes of integrative worldviews, which are in most cases not in accordance with Western democratic values. Martin Jacques, co-founder of the British think-tank Demos and Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, rightly argues that China will emerge over the next half-century as the world’s leading power. Its continued development will be one of the forces that shape the century. But it will not be just any old superpower. It has its own distinctive combination of attributes that differ significantly from those in modern Western societies. This means that the twenty-first century will be one of ‘contested modernities’.

Or to put it into our perspective: China will promote its own ideals and concepts of integration, integral, inclusion and holistic. As core concepts of Chinese history, integration and inclusion are traditionally strongly related to national unity and to stability and peace; Western concepts such as human rights or the constitutional state do not play any significant role. Thus, if Jacques is right, the coming epoch will not only be one of ‘competing modernities’ but also of ‘competing concepts of integral’– with a presumably strong impact on the overall development and self-interpretation of integral worldviews and paradigms.

This is because it seems likely that no concept of integrative worldview could remain completely untouched by such an overall development, at least not in the medium- and long-term– because paradigms are an effect of changing socio-political and cultural environments at least as much as they influence or even co-‘create’ them. Simultaneously, there are signs that such a competition between different concepts of modernity (including that of late postmodernity) may be increasingly taking place also within the ‘Western’62 cultural and political hemisphere itself, particularly between the societal macro-blueprints of the USA (weak state, strong individual) and Continental Europe (welfare state).63 The currently growing competition between different models of democratic modernity within the West is likely to have profound effects on the future interpretation and hermeneutics of what an appropriate integrative worldview within, and beyond, modernity may look like, and how it may be best implemented, enacted and continuously enhanced through its singular (political, economic, technological, organizational, demographic) dimensions.

In this constellation, the very concepts of integration and/or integrative worldview as commonly deployed in approaches deriving for the most part from variants of the forma mentis of ‘the West’, are in growing internationaland intercultural– dispute.

Second, at stake in this dispute is the concept of integration or integral as opposed to various non-liberal interpretations of inclusion as preferred by non-Western approaches. While integration tends to be seen as a ‘strong’ term, inclusion is regarded as a ‘weaker’ and thus more flexible concept, capable of being applied more easily also in non-Western settings. Thus, the tendency towards contested modernities seems to be producing a growing dichotomy within the terminological span of integration versus inclusion– i.e. within the inner dialectics of the core term itself, thus modifying these dialectics by creating new oppositions, if not contradictions. That is also due in part to the fact that integration has all too often been used, especially in the (two) Bush era(s) 1989–93 and 2001–9, as a terminological and conceptual tool of domination, exercised by the ‘only superpower’ and the ‘last nation state’, the USA, together with its ally Europe, over the rest of the world by means of a programmatic ‘civilizational unitarism’ or ‘one-sided universalism’.

Therefore, a lot of mistrust has been accumulated, which yet has to be overcome in a sustainable way if the term integrative is to assume a new, progressive meaning in the greater cultural and paradigmatic context of the post-Bush era.

Third, the multiplication of options in relation to what democratization may mean that has been taking place since 1989/91 has contributed to the rise of a new complexity of socio-political utopia that embraces the concept of integrative. For example, most of the blueprints for what integration can mean are not culturally concordant among the semi-, proto and pre-democracies and the failed states that have arisen all over the world, especially in the East of Europe and in the global South. While most of the currently discussed concepts of integration in these countries are democratic in a very broad sense, many of them are dealing with different concepts of what exactly democracy can and should mean in the burgeoning multi-polar world at home and abroad.

Fourth, at the same time, the civilizational, cultural and social patterns of the West67 seem paradoxically to be still de facto presiding (consciously or unconsciously) over the internationally increasingly multi-layered ideas and paradigm developments regarding integration, and thus indirectly also over the core features of the general process of globalization itself. Again, in this constellation, many of the current attempts at integrative worldviews aspire to remain ‘Western’ in their historical formament is, as well as in their basic methodological and theoretical gestures in a rather explicit sense. This is producing specific contradictions within the increasingly numerous attempts at contextualization of current integrative mind-sets within worldwide settings. The discussion about how to introduce appropriate elements of cultural diversity into the concept of integral itself beyond the question of competing modernities is still in its very early stages, but will have to assume a much bigger pro-active role than it has been assigned so far.

Fifth, there remains a striking inverse social gradient in integrative mindsets in relation to social status, social class and income stratification. This observation is valid for the West and the East– as well as for most other parts of the world– to a similar extent. In dealing with this problem (which remains largely unaddressed), we should not underestimate the social constructedness of the integrative mind-set itself. This is because basically all the forerunners of today’s integrative worldviews from the 1970s to the 2000s have pointed out that affinity to integrative worldviews is not independent of wealth, and thus of the level reached, individually and collectively, on the ‘Maslow pyramid’ in a given historical and cultural setting. Again, this relation seems to be true mainly for the first world, as (to mention just one example) the research carried out by Ronald Inglehart and others on ‘post-materialistic’ trends in Western civilization in the past four decades has demonstrated impressively.

But it is increasingly a phenomenon that characterizes the situation of integrative thought in developing countries too: integral thinking remains something for those who are better off. Summing up, the relation between social status and concern about integrative worldviews cannot be denied, not even in relation to our own time; everybody who would like to hide it under the table is going in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, we believe that the present trend towards integrative worldviews must be attributed to more than relative status and wealth: there seems to be in addition a structural necessity arising out of objectively developing social complexity that is not necessarily tied to status and wealth as such, but rather to pluralism and decentralization, and thus is not necessarily a derivative of social stratification.

In many ways these five problem factors, taken together, are currently describing more complex trajectories than those we have experienced so far."