I have previously written a "A Quick Sketch on Developmental Justice"... part of what I was exploring was multiple forms of justice which account for the multiple ways in which injustice and justice are both enacted and experienced by a diverse range of individuals, communities and societies, including those forms which are both "internally" and "externally" imposed upon any person or group.
I have been exploring this page on "Integral Justice"... feeling inspired:
"Integral Justice provides a holistic and integrated
response to the complex and heterogeneous needs of ‘transitional’ or
‘post-conflict’ societies.
Transitional justice emerged as a field in the 1990s. It dealt with
the legacy of war crimes and gross human rights violations committed by
combattants and dictatorships. Transitional justice conventionally seeks
to redress injustice and pursue accountability through truth
commissions, trials, or vetting. It also seeks to restore the rule of
law. Integral justice builds on transitional justice – but goes a step
further to fill its gaps.
Integral justice recognizes that injustice is experienced differently
by different people within a society. Injustice is also experienced at
several levels, some visible and tangible and some invisible and
intangible. Conventional transitional justice respond to the explicit or
visible levels, through political, legal and social measures. TJ
overlooks the invisible levels, which are often too sensitive to be
addressed. This leaves a huge gap for victims and societies.
‘Integral’ justice is a holistic response to these diverse needs of
survivors and societies for the injustices associated with war,
violence, oppression and tyranny; it makes explicit all that has been
implicit and overlooked. Integral justice comprises five deepening
dimensions:
* Politico-Legal justice: including truth and reconciliation commissions, trials and reparations.
* Societal justice: including collective reparation, commemoration, education and memorials.
* Cultural justice: including symbolic reparation and revival of cultural meaning and tradition.
* Ecological justice: including healing the fractures between people and their environments.
* Ethical/Spiritual justice: including the revitalization of values, ethics and spiritual meaning.
An integral approach is fundamentally trans-border, trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary.
We humans are complex beings. We are not only social or political
animals, but also emotional, cultural, psychological, spiritual, natural
and physical, creative beings. We have complex and changing needs and
evolving levels of consciousness. Integral Justice transcends borders,
penetrates and understands cultures, and combines disciplines to provide
satisfactory responses to the injustice suffered by victims and the
wounds inflicted upon society as a whole. Conventional political and
legal measures of transitional justice like trials and truth commissions
are more effective if they are built upon the foundations of ethical,
ecological and cultural justice."
Showing posts with label integral theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label integral theory. Show all posts
Friday, June 6, 2014
Sunday, April 20, 2014
evolution
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
- Richard Buckminster Fuller
Friday, February 22, 2013
Assimilation // Integration
I am thinking about the differences between Assimilation and Integration.
Assimilation
Etymologically, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word Assimilation comes
from Old French assimilacion, from Latin assimilationem (nom. assimilatio)
Here, I describe cultural and political Assimilation as the ways in which groups of people who are politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised (e.g. new migrants, colonised people) within a broader polity start to adopt the customs, language, and political ideals of dominant groups. To achieve as much as possible within existing normative frameworks of citizenship.
I describe Assimilationism as ways in which Assimilation becomes concretised as a goal for politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised groups of people. In other words, the goal of Assimilationism is not to challenge the dialectic of Assimilation nor to critique normative frameworks, but rather to succeed within them. To become "like" and "similar to" the dominant.
For a long time, I have self-described as "Anti-assimilationist". Anti-assimilationism is itself one possible attitudinal position I could take within a multicultural perspective. In other words, for me, and for a long time, the goal was for these individuals and groups of people to explore self-determination and develop their own frameworks and notions of success and community, beyond normative ideals, and capitulation to the demands of the dominant.
All that said, my stance has shifted somewhat...
Integration
Etymologically, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word Integration comes
from French intégration and directly from Latin integrationem (nom. integratio)
"renewal, restoration"
Here, I describe Integration as the ways in which individuals and groups of people, both those of us who are politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised AND those of us who are privileged beneficiaries of our enfranchisement/citizenship actually shape one another.
I would thus describe Integrationism partially as the way that this process of shaping one another (both the dominant and marginal groups) becomes more aspirational, and indicative at least of the possibility for "renewal" and "restoration" of one another in this very shaping. One example could be the ways in which asylum seekers, through participation in broader host cultures, experience a "renewal" and "restoration" of their own self-capacity to maintain traditions or livelihood that would have been politically dangerous or unfeasible in their countries of origin, and simultaneously, that the host culture necessarily enlarges its own capacity to literally hold "the Other" within its self-concept.
Integration is also where the "Centre" and its "Periphery" (Other) both dissolve; are integrated.
Integration, from a few perspectives
In a sense, an Integrationist approach also includes the possibility of the Anti-assimilationist perspective. After all, the very frameworks of "self-determination" and "community" and so on require at the very least:
1. An inculcation into these values as part of an existent political possibility within the diversity of normative political frameworks within a polity.
2. A common language with which people can communicate with one another on these, and thus be also recognised by others as doing and enacting these very values.
When I am in a room full of other people of colour in Australia, as one example, communicating Anti-assimilationist viewpoints, the other presumption is that we are already integrated enough in existing normative frameworks that we could, for example, choose to speak with one another in English (which likely was not the mother tongue of many of our immediate families/ancestors).
With English as an inherited colonial language, which has also become my lingua franca (for better or for worse) in communicating political ideals, it necessarily means that all ideals are communicated within the liberational potential and limitations of that language. In other words, all ideals, along with the colonial English language medium itself, are "integrated" in their very expression, as well as in their intelligibility and coherence to others.
The other point here then, is that an Integrationist approach would also, by necessity, include an Assimilationist approach. In that: I have assimilated enough of normative cultural expectations of me (to, for example, engage the dominant political system, or to speak its language simply to survive), that I am enabled to then also challenge assimilation.
The "Problem" with Integrationism
For strict Assimilationists, Integration is unintelligible, and likely extremely confronting, to choose to hold onto value systems that are not kindly regarded within dominant society. Why choose to fight that battle, when you can play the existing game well and see enough role models of "success" that you could then escape conditions of bare survival? Here, Integration would be likely conflated with Anti-assimilationism, and disregarded as elitist.
For strict Anti-assimilationists, it is likely to be perceived as a cop-out to allow for political engagement to rest on the ways we have already assimilated... Far more viable, particularly for vulnerable and marginalised communities, to focus on the ways that dominant culture has to become more accomodating of difference and diversity, than to acknowledge that this very demand for accomodation is precisely a negotiation which, at its most powerful, compelling, and creative, involves mutuality in transformation and change. Integration would be conflated with Assimilation (the demand strictly for the marginalised person/group to change) and may be disregarded as "scab"-ish.
Another problem here as well is that the term "integration" is often used as synonymous with "assimilation" (so that to "integrate someone/a community" is equivalent to saying to "assimilate someone/a community into dominant society['s norms and values]".
Within an Integrationist perspective, Integration would also have to account for accomodating and integrating its very negation. In other words, a polity which is truly pluralistic and with the potential for integration of large groups of incredibly diverse and sometimes seemingly paradoxical cultural drives, must necessarily accomodate both Assimilationist and Anti-Assimilationist criticisms of Integration, while also necessarily protecting the sanctity of this very accommodational drive which conditions the possibility that such divergent views can even be in dialogue with one another.
In other words, not that X (marginal-individual/community) is "integrated into" Y (dominant/hegemonic-culture/community), but rather:
X & Y are integrated
Integration, Again
This very accommodation of divergent views, therefore, and indeed, the ability for a polity not only to "wrestle" with divergent views, but also to "accommodate" them (while strictly protecting the sanctity of the freedom for accomodation) is the very expression of Integrationism...
** Note: I have throughout this essay meant the word "accommodate" to connote "provide shelter for", rather than its other possible connotation of "merely tolerate"
In other words, Integrationism is not necessarily a "view within" or a "perspective on", but is an "orientation to" cultural politics. It is also a dialectical process that does not belong either exclusively to hegemonic groups nor to marginalised groups.
To "integrate" is to breathe with one another, to hold one another's views, to make room for them, to sleep on them, to make decisions of mutual benefit and with sincerity and a baseline recognition of our common humanity and common drive to alleviate our suffering in our lives.
Integrationism, to me, thus necessarily moves beyond the discursive... into the breath, the body, the bodily tensions and releases which are themselves "digestive" and integrative of diversity and universalism, divergence and convergence.
Assimilation
Etymologically, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word Assimilation comes
from Old French assimilacion, from Latin assimilationem (nom. assimilatio)
"likeness, similarity"
Here, I describe cultural and political Assimilation as the ways in which groups of people who are politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised (e.g. new migrants, colonised people) within a broader polity start to adopt the customs, language, and political ideals of dominant groups. To achieve as much as possible within existing normative frameworks of citizenship.
I describe Assimilationism as ways in which Assimilation becomes concretised as a goal for politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised groups of people. In other words, the goal of Assimilationism is not to challenge the dialectic of Assimilation nor to critique normative frameworks, but rather to succeed within them. To become "like" and "similar to" the dominant.
For a long time, I have self-described as "Anti-assimilationist". Anti-assimilationism is itself one possible attitudinal position I could take within a multicultural perspective. In other words, for me, and for a long time, the goal was for these individuals and groups of people to explore self-determination and develop their own frameworks and notions of success and community, beyond normative ideals, and capitulation to the demands of the dominant.
All that said, my stance has shifted somewhat...
Integration
Etymologically, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word Integration comes
from French intégration and directly from Latin integrationem (nom. integratio)
"renewal, restoration"
Here, I describe Integration as the ways in which individuals and groups of people, both those of us who are politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised AND those of us who are privileged beneficiaries of our enfranchisement/citizenship actually shape one another.
I would thus describe Integrationism partially as the way that this process of shaping one another (both the dominant and marginal groups) becomes more aspirational, and indicative at least of the possibility for "renewal" and "restoration" of one another in this very shaping. One example could be the ways in which asylum seekers, through participation in broader host cultures, experience a "renewal" and "restoration" of their own self-capacity to maintain traditions or livelihood that would have been politically dangerous or unfeasible in their countries of origin, and simultaneously, that the host culture necessarily enlarges its own capacity to literally hold "the Other" within its self-concept.
Integration is also where the "Centre" and its "Periphery" (Other) both dissolve; are integrated.
Integration, from a few perspectives
In a sense, an Integrationist approach also includes the possibility of the Anti-assimilationist perspective. After all, the very frameworks of "self-determination" and "community" and so on require at the very least:
1. An inculcation into these values as part of an existent political possibility within the diversity of normative political frameworks within a polity.
2. A common language with which people can communicate with one another on these, and thus be also recognised by others as doing and enacting these very values.
When I am in a room full of other people of colour in Australia, as one example, communicating Anti-assimilationist viewpoints, the other presumption is that we are already integrated enough in existing normative frameworks that we could, for example, choose to speak with one another in English (which likely was not the mother tongue of many of our immediate families/ancestors).
With English as an inherited colonial language, which has also become my lingua franca (for better or for worse) in communicating political ideals, it necessarily means that all ideals are communicated within the liberational potential and limitations of that language. In other words, all ideals, along with the colonial English language medium itself, are "integrated" in their very expression, as well as in their intelligibility and coherence to others.
The other point here then, is that an Integrationist approach would also, by necessity, include an Assimilationist approach. In that: I have assimilated enough of normative cultural expectations of me (to, for example, engage the dominant political system, or to speak its language simply to survive), that I am enabled to then also challenge assimilation.
The "Problem" with Integrationism
For strict Assimilationists, Integration is unintelligible, and likely extremely confronting, to choose to hold onto value systems that are not kindly regarded within dominant society. Why choose to fight that battle, when you can play the existing game well and see enough role models of "success" that you could then escape conditions of bare survival? Here, Integration would be likely conflated with Anti-assimilationism, and disregarded as elitist.
For strict Anti-assimilationists, it is likely to be perceived as a cop-out to allow for political engagement to rest on the ways we have already assimilated... Far more viable, particularly for vulnerable and marginalised communities, to focus on the ways that dominant culture has to become more accomodating of difference and diversity, than to acknowledge that this very demand for accomodation is precisely a negotiation which, at its most powerful, compelling, and creative, involves mutuality in transformation and change. Integration would be conflated with Assimilation (the demand strictly for the marginalised person/group to change) and may be disregarded as "scab"-ish.
Another problem here as well is that the term "integration" is often used as synonymous with "assimilation" (so that to "integrate someone/a community" is equivalent to saying to "assimilate someone/a community into dominant society['s norms and values]".
Within an Integrationist perspective, Integration would also have to account for accomodating and integrating its very negation. In other words, a polity which is truly pluralistic and with the potential for integration of large groups of incredibly diverse and sometimes seemingly paradoxical cultural drives, must necessarily accomodate both Assimilationist and Anti-Assimilationist criticisms of Integration, while also necessarily protecting the sanctity of this very accommodational drive which conditions the possibility that such divergent views can even be in dialogue with one another.
In other words, not that X (marginal-individual/community) is "integrated into" Y (dominant/hegemonic-culture/community), but rather:
X & Y are integrated
Integration, Again
This very accommodation of divergent views, therefore, and indeed, the ability for a polity not only to "wrestle" with divergent views, but also to "accommodate" them (while strictly protecting the sanctity of the freedom for accomodation) is the very expression of Integrationism...
** Note: I have throughout this essay meant the word "accommodate" to connote "provide shelter for", rather than its other possible connotation of "merely tolerate"
In other words, Integrationism is not necessarily a "view within" or a "perspective on", but is an "orientation to" cultural politics. It is also a dialectical process that does not belong either exclusively to hegemonic groups nor to marginalised groups.
To "integrate" is to breathe with one another, to hold one another's views, to make room for them, to sleep on them, to make decisions of mutual benefit and with sincerity and a baseline recognition of our common humanity and common drive to alleviate our suffering in our lives.
Integrationism, to me, thus necessarily moves beyond the discursive... into the breath, the body, the bodily tensions and releases which are themselves "digestive" and integrative of diversity and universalism, divergence and convergence.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
A Quick Sketch on Developmental Justice
This post is mostly a rambling of my thoughts, not particularly coherent nor created for an audience, for now... But I want to get all of this out before I start creating more coherent posts about these issues.
First.
An observation:
That the post-Ken Wilberian "Integral theory" intellectual and organisational enterprise, (that I have noticed and/or been a part of, online, in the USA, and in Australia) is disproportionately White.
Second.
That unlike English language American Buddhist literature, post-Wilberian Integral Theory is also disproportionately not Jewish (which, from a normative perspective, says as much about English-American Buddhism's "Jewishness" as it says anything about the "goyim", non-Jewish hegemony of Integral theory).
I have been, in my spiritual and philosophical life, largely been influenced by both.
Third.
That through exposure to Ken Wilber's writings, along with meeting up with amazing folks at Sydney Integral, I was also exposed to the following, teleological theory-praxes of individual and collective adult development...
-> Don Beck and Chris Cowan's "Spiral Dynamics"
-> Susanne Cook-Greuter's "Leadership Development Framework"
-> Terri O' Fallon's independent work ... Terri is also one of the key staff in Pacific Integral, that runs the Generating Transformative Change (GTC) program that I have been a part of... (two of their alumni are based in Australia in New Zealand, so they formed South Pacific Integral to host the GTC in this region... I was part of the first cohort here).
-> Bill Tobert's "Action Inquiry"
and more...
Fourth.
Through my learnings and conversations, I have encountered that materialist theories of social justice begin to emerge at particular stages of the development of consciousness (of both individuals and collectives).
Fifth.
Through a few conversations with Terri O'Fallon, I have encountered the idea of Developmental Justice, which is the sense of justice which takes into account the "rights" of people to be "where they are at" developmentally... (i.e. strictly and dogmatically materialist conceptions of justice can themselves be theoretical and practical enactments of Developmental Injustice).
Sixth.
A consideration of the line... "We can measure the health of a nation by the way it treats its indigenous peoples."
(an additional consideration of how many Indigenous peoples (to my knowledge, of Canada, USA, Australia, and New Zealand, among many others for sure) hold the projections of the dominant national culture's hegemonic concerns around savagery, primitivism, "backwardness", and the associated pathologies of "early" cultural developmental levels... part of my interest in developmental justice, then, emerges from considering a few things:
1. These concepts of Indigenous people (as representations of "early" cultural developmental stages... e.g. hunter-gatherer, tribal, animistic, shamanic, etc.) are partially projections of dominant, modernist culture onto certain groups of people who claim Indigenous/Aboriginal heritage.
2. Some communities and individuals of Indigenous/Aboriginal heritage also introject these concepts, turning them into "self-concepts".
3. To the extent that there is, from a modernist perspective, a lived reality of "backwardness" among a disproportionately large number of people of Indigenous/Aboriginal heritage, then the health of a nation is partially contingent not only on how it socialises Indigenous/Aboriginal people (indeed, all people), into modernist ways of being/doing, but also on the extent to which it can graciously hold, the legitimacy of early developmental ways of being-in-the-world.
4. How well do we nurture national cultures which hold and support spaces in which people can manifest these "early developmental" stages in healthy forms...?
5. This is true not just for indigenous people, but also for people who are of colonial/migrant heritage.
My friend Tim wisely points out that the ways that some people engage these "early developmental" stuff, in modernist, consumerist pathos, is through encouraging magical ideas of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, etc., but that these are unfortunately, in the context of modernity, encapsulated within a socialisation into consumerist culture
6. That Indigenous/Aboriginal folks are in a unique cultural/ancestral position to be curators of some of these early developmental stages as linked to Land...
i.e. not just in ways that are of or from early developmental perspectives, but as people who hold the unique struggle of integrating (and iterating) considerations of "early" development in "later" developmental considerations of developmental justice within a national and global culture, in the service of the health of the whole spiral [of human developmental potential] (to use language from Beck and Cowan).
Seventh.
This means, also, considering the ways that Integral Theory, in its hegemonic Whiteness (and straightness, and male-dominance, and upper classness, and American-ness, and so on), may re-inscribe some of the same materialist blindspots of modernist injustice, unwittingly.
(in my observation, tending toward exclamations which reveal privilege and ignorance, rather than outright, malicious oppressive intent)
Eighth.
This also means observing my own involvement in Integral, as the normative means through which I articulate or formulate theories and practices of enacting developmental justice.
Healthy skepticism.
Embracing, including, and integrating the baby AND the bathwater.
First.
An observation:
That the post-Ken Wilberian "Integral theory" intellectual and organisational enterprise, (that I have noticed and/or been a part of, online, in the USA, and in Australia) is disproportionately White.
Second.
That unlike English language American Buddhist literature, post-Wilberian Integral Theory is also disproportionately not Jewish (which, from a normative perspective, says as much about English-American Buddhism's "Jewishness" as it says anything about the "goyim", non-Jewish hegemony of Integral theory).
I have been, in my spiritual and philosophical life, largely been influenced by both.
Third.
That through exposure to Ken Wilber's writings, along with meeting up with amazing folks at Sydney Integral, I was also exposed to the following, teleological theory-praxes of individual and collective adult development...
-> Don Beck and Chris Cowan's "Spiral Dynamics"
-> Susanne Cook-Greuter's "Leadership Development Framework"
-> Terri O' Fallon's independent work ... Terri is also one of the key staff in Pacific Integral, that runs the Generating Transformative Change (GTC) program that I have been a part of... (two of their alumni are based in Australia in New Zealand, so they formed South Pacific Integral to host the GTC in this region... I was part of the first cohort here).
-> Bill Tobert's "Action Inquiry"
and more...
Fourth.
Through my learnings and conversations, I have encountered that materialist theories of social justice begin to emerge at particular stages of the development of consciousness (of both individuals and collectives).
Fifth.
Through a few conversations with Terri O'Fallon, I have encountered the idea of Developmental Justice, which is the sense of justice which takes into account the "rights" of people to be "where they are at" developmentally... (i.e. strictly and dogmatically materialist conceptions of justice can themselves be theoretical and practical enactments of Developmental Injustice).
Sixth.
A consideration of the line... "We can measure the health of a nation by the way it treats its indigenous peoples."
(an additional consideration of how many Indigenous peoples (to my knowledge, of Canada, USA, Australia, and New Zealand, among many others for sure) hold the projections of the dominant national culture's hegemonic concerns around savagery, primitivism, "backwardness", and the associated pathologies of "early" cultural developmental levels... part of my interest in developmental justice, then, emerges from considering a few things:
1. These concepts of Indigenous people (as representations of "early" cultural developmental stages... e.g. hunter-gatherer, tribal, animistic, shamanic, etc.) are partially projections of dominant, modernist culture onto certain groups of people who claim Indigenous/Aboriginal heritage.
2. Some communities and individuals of Indigenous/Aboriginal heritage also introject these concepts, turning them into "self-concepts".
3. To the extent that there is, from a modernist perspective, a lived reality of "backwardness" among a disproportionately large number of people of Indigenous/Aboriginal heritage, then the health of a nation is partially contingent not only on how it socialises Indigenous/Aboriginal people (indeed, all people), into modernist ways of being/doing, but also on the extent to which it can graciously hold, the legitimacy of early developmental ways of being-in-the-world.
4. How well do we nurture national cultures which hold and support spaces in which people can manifest these "early developmental" stages in healthy forms...?
5. This is true not just for indigenous people, but also for people who are of colonial/migrant heritage.
My friend Tim wisely points out that the ways that some people engage these "early developmental" stuff, in modernist, consumerist pathos, is through encouraging magical ideas of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, etc., but that these are unfortunately, in the context of modernity, encapsulated within a socialisation into consumerist culture
6. That Indigenous/Aboriginal folks are in a unique cultural/ancestral position to be curators of some of these early developmental stages as linked to Land...
i.e. not just in ways that are of or from early developmental perspectives, but as people who hold the unique struggle of integrating (and iterating) considerations of "early" development in "later" developmental considerations of developmental justice within a national and global culture, in the service of the health of the whole spiral [of human developmental potential] (to use language from Beck and Cowan).
Seventh.
This means, also, considering the ways that Integral Theory, in its hegemonic Whiteness (and straightness, and male-dominance, and upper classness, and American-ness, and so on), may re-inscribe some of the same materialist blindspots of modernist injustice, unwittingly.
(in my observation, tending toward exclamations which reveal privilege and ignorance, rather than outright, malicious oppressive intent)
Eighth.
This also means observing my own involvement in Integral, as the normative means through which I articulate or formulate theories and practices of enacting developmental justice.
Healthy skepticism.
Embracing, including, and integrating the baby AND the bathwater.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Integral Theory & Pornography
In my previous post on Abstinence from Porn, I attempted to delineate a 'middle way' between two philosophical extremes, between being 'Anti-Porn' and 'Pro-porn.'
I wrote about abstinence from porn as an opportunity to gain mindful perspective on the nature of sexual desire. And how it manifests itself differently in simulacral form (online internet porn) as compared to the textures of interpersonal, tactile Relationship (being sexual/sensual with others, embodied, and in person).
In this post, I am going to try and speak more about porn from an integral perspective.
AQAL and Porn
According to Ken Wilber's AQAL model, all given phenomena can be apprehended from at least four different perspectives from four 'quadrants,' as shown in the image above.
The top row is about the Individual
The bottom row is about the Collective
The left hand side refers to Interiors
and the right hand side refers to Exteriors
To put them into quadrants, we thus have:
an Upper Left (UL) "Individual Interior"
an Upper Right (UR) "Individual Exterior"
a Lower Left (LL) "Collective Interior"
and a Lower Right (LR) "Collective Exterior"
Let's use porn as an example.
Porn would have a UL, Individual Interior manifestation, these comprise our interior, subjective responses:
e.g. the experience of titilation, yearning, horniness, intentionality, freedom, or disgust, aversion, apathy, boredom, compulsion, guilt, etc.
It manifests in the UR, Individual Exterior, as in its measureable effects on our individual, objectifiable physical body and behavioural change: e.g. bloodflow to genital region, neurotransmissions in our limbic brain, increased heart rate, etc., as well as masturbation, etc.
Porn has LL, Collective Interior or CULTURAL aspects... The "who and what" that is represented, as conditioned by certain cultural expectations of propriety and impropriety, the specific 'fetishisms' that arise, the meaning of certain bodytypes, acts, humiliations, triumphs, cultural tropes that are explored or undermined in the narratives of pornography given diverse cultural contexts etc... For example, Japanese porn and German porn are different not just because of different body/phenotypes, but also because of how these physical types are racialised by consumers both within and outside of their cultural boundaries, for both intended and unintended consumers...
Its LR, Collective Exterior aspects have to do with the measureable, material conditions and its effects on collectives/populations
e.g. How porn is produced and distributed? What is the medium of its expression (print? online video?)? What are the physical sites of its consumption (e.g. in a bedroom? in a cinema?)? What are the political systems are in place that condition its production, distribution, and consumption, and what are the aggregated effects it has on people on a population-wide level (e.g. epidemiological data of correlations between porn use and certain sexual health outcomes), etc...
Any given phenomenon (in this case, porn), exists in the way that it does in ALL FOUR QUADRANTS (there is no phenomenon that ABSENTS its manifestation in any single quadrant).
The study of porn, from an integral perspective, therefore requires the careful consideration of the methodologies for studying the contents of each quadrant.
Considering my Previous post on Abstinence from Porn
In my previous post, I explored the UL by studying the subjective states that arose in me from my consumption of or abstinence from porn throughout the narrative of my personal experiences. I also included the study of some subjective reports from others who had themselves used porn, or who had explored their sexuality with partners who had used porn.
The UR perspective I gave through an amateur elucidation of the material workings of the mind-body in its exposure to pornographic material. Here, I have found Marnia Robinson's blog, Cupid's Poisoned Arrow especially helpful. She talks about the neurochemical differences between pornographic sexual stimulation and interpersonal touch, and how habituation to porn can be argued on the basis of noting brain changes through habitual porn use.
I then briefly mentioned Robinson's failings. She does not adequately address her own biases from a LL and LR perspective. My criticism is of her heteronormative assumptions, and her privileging of monogamy as the ideal social arrangement, through biological determinism: that is to say, through a REDUCTION of the phenomenon of porn/sexual stimulation to its measureable UR manifestations in the brain.
In my last post, I noted how critiques of porn centre around the depiction of women and people of colour (which is a LL analysis using cultural theories: feminist/queer/anti-racist/postcolonial theories), as well as around who owns the means of production (which is both a LL socio- and LR economic analysis). I also surmised that there are liberatory uses of porn in this way as well, in terms of reclaiming porn through a radical emancipatory lens.
My own attempt in finding a 'middle way' here was around integrating the wisdom and perspectives of the LL (feminist, queer) and LR (materialist/Marxist) with those of the UL (phenomenology, personal experience) and UR (neuroscientific understandings)...
And then what?
By integrating these various perspectives in my project to apprehend Porn-As-Phenomenon, I believe I have grown in my own understanding of pornography. I see the limitations of the strictly UL perspective (i.e. ONLY personal experience of porn, which doesn't situate personal experience in a framework of socio-cultural-biological relations), the limitations of Robinson's UR commentaries (which rely on unsophisticated LL assumptions around the primacy of monogamy, heterosexual male experience, etc.) and the limitations of the LL 'culture war' debates.
Neither pro-porn nor anti-porn advocates adequately address the more morally-neutral neurochemical implications of habituation. According to Robinson's commentary, pro-porn proponents do not adequately consider the addictive and escalating potential of porn use, even if it begins innocuously... And of course, anti-porn advocates who shame others into quitting porn for moral reasons themselves inadvertently HEIGHTEN the addictive quality of porn (because that which is forbidden elicits a greater 'hit' of dopamine rush, which is implicated in experiences of addiction).
In other words, while Robinson's UR reductionism could use some LL deconstruction, the LL perspectives that I delineated as strawmen in my last article could also use the wisdom of the UR (made possible because of advances in neuroscience) and the LR (made possible because of emerging epidemiological/social research data, for example, on the correlation of endemic porn use with erectile (dys)function).
That said, I would like to address some of my own assumptions in my critique of porn use, and in my personal decision to opt for abstinence... and I will raise some further questions for pondering.
1. That Authenticity is important in sexual experience
and that porn is 'less authentic' than relating to another person in person. What IS authenticity? What are measures of authenticity? To be informed by neurochemical affect (UL & UR) is one thing, but to assume that 'authenticity,' however it is arbitrarily defined, is impossible through porn... That was a bit of a philosophical leap. I also did not consider the specific sorts of intimacies that could hypothetically be enabled by using porn with a partner.
2. That the Interpersonal is more central to sexuality than Solo sexuality
What role does the Other play in my experience of authentic sexual experience? Are there hierarchies of contact with the Other? Who draws these lines where? Why do I privilege certain sorts of contact with Others as compared to another (sort of contact)?
There are all sorts of sexual relationships one can have with others...
There could be an Orgy / Group Sex encounter
A one-on-one sexual encounter with One other
The contact with the Other through porn (which involved real people in its production)
The contact with the Other through fantasy while masturbating solo
The complete non-contact with the Other through masturbating solo and intentionally focusing on one's own body.
Perhaps Porn is LITERALLY a middle-way between certain extremes?
Still, I would argue that mindful masturbation (remaining present with the sensations of my own body) is more emancipatory, from a strictly meditative component, as compared EITHER to mindless pornographic consumption OR mindless sex with others. This likely will require a future post for elaboration...
3. That the 'producers' of porn are the empowered, owning classes
I have a slightly different perspective on this now, based on an amazing conversation I had yesterday with a group of folks on this piece on Integral Sexology by Ray Harris... Factoring a more traditional, Marxist, class-critique of porn in a late-capitalist world... We can consider how sexual experience has historically required that all of us identify with Labour. We work to have sex. We court, we date, we buy dinner, we flirt, we dance; We have to increase our skills in these ways in order to reach orgasmic satisfaction in interaction with Others.
However, now, the ubiquity of porn means that consumers of porn no longer require the Marxist revolution, i.e. identifying with Labour and empowering ourselves by taking control of the means of production, such as the people depicted in porn simultaneously owning the cameras, and the channels of distribution if any at all...
Instead, we now identify with the owning classes: That we are ENTITLED to others' sexual Labour, that we need only click a mouse or a button with high speed internet access in order to be titillated... We require no introspection, no wresting of control of the 'means of production,' etc. etc.
Far from being the Enemy, producers of porn are simply pawns... They are rewarded by consumers, who pit the Labour of the producers AGAINST the Labour of the actors...
My previous proposed solution was from the perspective of the 'owning class' of the Consumer of porn. That is: To abstain from consumption altogether.
But another potential solution (or attempt at redress) can be in the form of identifying with sexual Labour, and to then work more closely with Producers and Actors of porn, indeed, perhaps even dissolving that distinction altogether. To be producer, actor, AND consumer of porn that I co-create with a community of folks who are similarly committed to emancipation and de-habituation (from compulsive patterns of consumption) as well as to Love.
Indeed, while this may look nothing like porn as we know it, it would be helpful not to toss porn out of the window... Far more dangerous and liberating to completely demystify it, and feel THAT freedom. The only way out as Through...
I wrote about abstinence from porn as an opportunity to gain mindful perspective on the nature of sexual desire. And how it manifests itself differently in simulacral form (online internet porn) as compared to the textures of interpersonal, tactile Relationship (being sexual/sensual with others, embodied, and in person).
In this post, I am going to try and speak more about porn from an integral perspective.
AQAL and Porn
According to Ken Wilber's AQAL model, all given phenomena can be apprehended from at least four different perspectives from four 'quadrants,' as shown in the image above.
The top row is about the Individual
The bottom row is about the Collective
The left hand side refers to Interiors
and the right hand side refers to Exteriors
To put them into quadrants, we thus have:
an Upper Left (UL) "Individual Interior"
an Upper Right (UR) "Individual Exterior"
a Lower Left (LL) "Collective Interior"
and a Lower Right (LR) "Collective Exterior"
Let's use porn as an example.
Porn would have a UL, Individual Interior manifestation, these comprise our interior, subjective responses:
e.g. the experience of titilation, yearning, horniness, intentionality, freedom, or disgust, aversion, apathy, boredom, compulsion, guilt, etc.
It manifests in the UR, Individual Exterior, as in its measureable effects on our individual, objectifiable physical body and behavioural change: e.g. bloodflow to genital region, neurotransmissions in our limbic brain, increased heart rate, etc., as well as masturbation, etc.
Porn has LL, Collective Interior or CULTURAL aspects... The "who and what" that is represented, as conditioned by certain cultural expectations of propriety and impropriety, the specific 'fetishisms' that arise, the meaning of certain bodytypes, acts, humiliations, triumphs, cultural tropes that are explored or undermined in the narratives of pornography given diverse cultural contexts etc... For example, Japanese porn and German porn are different not just because of different body/phenotypes, but also because of how these physical types are racialised by consumers both within and outside of their cultural boundaries, for both intended and unintended consumers...
Its LR, Collective Exterior aspects have to do with the measureable, material conditions and its effects on collectives/populations
e.g. How porn is produced and distributed? What is the medium of its expression (print? online video?)? What are the physical sites of its consumption (e.g. in a bedroom? in a cinema?)? What are the political systems are in place that condition its production, distribution, and consumption, and what are the aggregated effects it has on people on a population-wide level (e.g. epidemiological data of correlations between porn use and certain sexual health outcomes), etc...
Any given phenomenon (in this case, porn), exists in the way that it does in ALL FOUR QUADRANTS (there is no phenomenon that ABSENTS its manifestation in any single quadrant).
The study of porn, from an integral perspective, therefore requires the careful consideration of the methodologies for studying the contents of each quadrant.
Considering my Previous post on Abstinence from Porn
In my previous post, I explored the UL by studying the subjective states that arose in me from my consumption of or abstinence from porn throughout the narrative of my personal experiences. I also included the study of some subjective reports from others who had themselves used porn, or who had explored their sexuality with partners who had used porn.
The UR perspective I gave through an amateur elucidation of the material workings of the mind-body in its exposure to pornographic material. Here, I have found Marnia Robinson's blog, Cupid's Poisoned Arrow especially helpful. She talks about the neurochemical differences between pornographic sexual stimulation and interpersonal touch, and how habituation to porn can be argued on the basis of noting brain changes through habitual porn use.
I then briefly mentioned Robinson's failings. She does not adequately address her own biases from a LL and LR perspective. My criticism is of her heteronormative assumptions, and her privileging of monogamy as the ideal social arrangement, through biological determinism: that is to say, through a REDUCTION of the phenomenon of porn/sexual stimulation to its measureable UR manifestations in the brain.
In my last post, I noted how critiques of porn centre around the depiction of women and people of colour (which is a LL analysis using cultural theories: feminist/queer/anti-racist/postcolonial theories), as well as around who owns the means of production (which is both a LL socio- and LR economic analysis). I also surmised that there are liberatory uses of porn in this way as well, in terms of reclaiming porn through a radical emancipatory lens.
My own attempt in finding a 'middle way' here was around integrating the wisdom and perspectives of the LL (feminist, queer) and LR (materialist/Marxist) with those of the UL (phenomenology, personal experience) and UR (neuroscientific understandings)...
And then what?
By integrating these various perspectives in my project to apprehend Porn-As-Phenomenon, I believe I have grown in my own understanding of pornography. I see the limitations of the strictly UL perspective (i.e. ONLY personal experience of porn, which doesn't situate personal experience in a framework of socio-cultural-biological relations), the limitations of Robinson's UR commentaries (which rely on unsophisticated LL assumptions around the primacy of monogamy, heterosexual male experience, etc.) and the limitations of the LL 'culture war' debates.
Neither pro-porn nor anti-porn advocates adequately address the more morally-neutral neurochemical implications of habituation. According to Robinson's commentary, pro-porn proponents do not adequately consider the addictive and escalating potential of porn use, even if it begins innocuously... And of course, anti-porn advocates who shame others into quitting porn for moral reasons themselves inadvertently HEIGHTEN the addictive quality of porn (because that which is forbidden elicits a greater 'hit' of dopamine rush, which is implicated in experiences of addiction).
In other words, while Robinson's UR reductionism could use some LL deconstruction, the LL perspectives that I delineated as strawmen in my last article could also use the wisdom of the UR (made possible because of advances in neuroscience) and the LR (made possible because of emerging epidemiological/social research data, for example, on the correlation of endemic porn use with erectile (dys)function).
That said, I would like to address some of my own assumptions in my critique of porn use, and in my personal decision to opt for abstinence... and I will raise some further questions for pondering.
1. That Authenticity is important in sexual experience
and that porn is 'less authentic' than relating to another person in person. What IS authenticity? What are measures of authenticity? To be informed by neurochemical affect (UL & UR) is one thing, but to assume that 'authenticity,' however it is arbitrarily defined, is impossible through porn... That was a bit of a philosophical leap. I also did not consider the specific sorts of intimacies that could hypothetically be enabled by using porn with a partner.
2. That the Interpersonal is more central to sexuality than Solo sexuality
What role does the Other play in my experience of authentic sexual experience? Are there hierarchies of contact with the Other? Who draws these lines where? Why do I privilege certain sorts of contact with Others as compared to another (sort of contact)?
There are all sorts of sexual relationships one can have with others...
There could be an Orgy / Group Sex encounter
A one-on-one sexual encounter with One other
The contact with the Other through porn (which involved real people in its production)
The contact with the Other through fantasy while masturbating solo
The complete non-contact with the Other through masturbating solo and intentionally focusing on one's own body.
Perhaps Porn is LITERALLY a middle-way between certain extremes?
Still, I would argue that mindful masturbation (remaining present with the sensations of my own body) is more emancipatory, from a strictly meditative component, as compared EITHER to mindless pornographic consumption OR mindless sex with others. This likely will require a future post for elaboration...
3. That the 'producers' of porn are the empowered, owning classes
I have a slightly different perspective on this now, based on an amazing conversation I had yesterday with a group of folks on this piece on Integral Sexology by Ray Harris... Factoring a more traditional, Marxist, class-critique of porn in a late-capitalist world... We can consider how sexual experience has historically required that all of us identify with Labour. We work to have sex. We court, we date, we buy dinner, we flirt, we dance; We have to increase our skills in these ways in order to reach orgasmic satisfaction in interaction with Others.
However, now, the ubiquity of porn means that consumers of porn no longer require the Marxist revolution, i.e. identifying with Labour and empowering ourselves by taking control of the means of production, such as the people depicted in porn simultaneously owning the cameras, and the channels of distribution if any at all...
Instead, we now identify with the owning classes: That we are ENTITLED to others' sexual Labour, that we need only click a mouse or a button with high speed internet access in order to be titillated... We require no introspection, no wresting of control of the 'means of production,' etc. etc.
Far from being the Enemy, producers of porn are simply pawns... They are rewarded by consumers, who pit the Labour of the producers AGAINST the Labour of the actors...
My previous proposed solution was from the perspective of the 'owning class' of the Consumer of porn. That is: To abstain from consumption altogether.
But another potential solution (or attempt at redress) can be in the form of identifying with sexual Labour, and to then work more closely with Producers and Actors of porn, indeed, perhaps even dissolving that distinction altogether. To be producer, actor, AND consumer of porn that I co-create with a community of folks who are similarly committed to emancipation and de-habituation (from compulsive patterns of consumption) as well as to Love.
Indeed, while this may look nothing like porn as we know it, it would be helpful not to toss porn out of the window... Far more dangerous and liberating to completely demystify it, and feel THAT freedom. The only way out as Through...
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