twocows, I've definitely got a response to the points you've raised :] But since we're going into "meta" territory, I first want to comment directly on the thread topic. Also I want to note that I stand corrected: I stated that no one else had yet brought up the abstract nature of "evil", but daigonite definitely beat me to the punch there. I think Blu-ray's post alludes to that as well.. My bad guys!
Anyway, this thread is about whether evil exists, and how we define it if it does exist. Which raises the question,
what does an integral framework have to do with the question at hand?
(Note that
I've bolded the essential points of this wall of text, on the premise that seeing the overall picture first may help make the details more cohesive.)
I think we've generally established that many people to perceive there to be a such thing as evil, which is basically something that's really, really bad. And what we've seen is that
there are a number of different and even contradictory perspectives on just what is considered evil and what is not!
An integral framework will help us pinpoint exactly where these differences are. This in turn, should make it easier to understand where others are coming from, and recognize the value of those viewpoints (which is what got me on my little rant in the first place).
To begin, let's look at what is considered "bad" or "harmful" at each of the seven major extant worldviews/worldspaces.
Tribal/Foraging (Magenta):
Kinship ties are of the utmost importance at this stage. Evil, therefore, would be to betray or cause harm to the members of one's family or clan. Outsiders are not shown this same respect. Rape, slavery, and murder are wrong only if done against one's kin.
Warrior/Horticultural (Red):
This is the stage of aggression and violence, where "might makes right". It would still be offensive in the extreme to harm one's kin, but this is no longer strictly off-limits, since power-plays are the name of the game. Evil, therefore, is primarily whatever threatens your own position of power or whatever angers the person or entity who has power over you.
Mythic/Agrarian (Amber):
This is a conformist stage, in which law and order bring stability to the chaotic world of the warrior. It is at this point that rules such as "Thou shalt not steal" dictate people's behavior, and guilt and shaming become a way to maintain order. The main thing that you must not do is break the rules, so the definition of evil is dictated by group norms and authority, whether God or king.
Rational/Industrial (Orange):
Starting about two to five hundred years ago (this is recent history, people!), individuals began to question and examine dogmatic belief systems. Tolerance and compassion for all people begin to emerge here. Even though the mythic level brings a huge increase in ethical behavior, that stage still does not extend compassion to all groups, equally. Slavery existed in the vast majority of agrarian societies, but within a 200-year period slavery was outlawed in every industrialized nation the world over. So we can say that at Orange, evil is anything that is oppressive to human beings, even if God or king is the oppressor.
Pluralistic/Informational (Green):
At this stage, the objective reality revealed through the Orange lens becomes deconstructed. There are no absolute truths here, only contexts and relative perspectives. As Rev. Paul Smith puts it, "The modernist bumper sticker advises, 'Question Authority.' The postmodern bumper sticker says, 'Question Reality.'" Likely views on evil are either that it doesn't exist at all, or that what is evil to me isn't evil to you, so neither person is "really right" or has a better viewpoint than the other. If there is one thing that is really evil, it is any sort of hierarchy or ranking system.
Integral/? (Turquoise):
If a techno-economic base has emerged with integral consciousness, I have no idea what it is. The green stage emerged about 60 years ago, and the integral stage is still in its infancy, more or less. The major difference between the integral stage and every one of the previous stages is that magenta, red, amber, orange, and green all believe that their view is the right one. The goal of the other worldviews is to get everyone to their own stage, while the goal of integral is "the health of every floor [stage], not just its own". I would postulate, and this is mostly an educated guess, that the major evil at integral might be intolerance or perhaps absolutism from the other stages.
(I'm confident that I "get" integral in an intellectual way, it just rings so true to me that there is always a "better" worldview - no stage has all the answers. But I'm also confident that my center of gravity is not at turquoise. It's more like orange/green, oh so slowly moving into teal. The shift to integral is drastic and life changing; the green and previous stages are all characterized by "deficiency" needs: I lack something, I get it, I feel better. But the integral and later stages are characterized by "abundance" needs: you just overflow with being and wellness and your primary need is to share it, as if you had just won the lottery or something. The point of all this is that I know this has not happened to me yet in any stable and permanent way, so when I say what something looks like from integral, it is, to some extent, informed guesswork.)
So
those are the "lenses" through which humans look, and evil looks a bit different through each one. It should be obvious that most answers to the question of "what is evil?" resemble these basic categories, but also that the definitions sometimes resemble more than one adjacent category. This is because the stages shade into one another; they're not strictly clear-cut and separate, which is why I like to refer to them by the color name scheme.
It also seems that looking at the various answers in this way shows the specific value of each perspective, rather than just broadly asserting that "they all have merit".
Now, that's a lot to read, but it's not overly complex. Y'know, compared to things that are extremely complex. Okay, maybe it's a lot, but we're halfway to AQAL. We've looked at
All of the
Levels, so now let's go around
All of the
Quadrants!
Those who have stated that evil does exist have generally also said that a
person is not evil, but that person's
actions may be evil. An individual may also have evil
intentions. Note that behavior and intention cannot be reduced; evil thoughts do not always lead do evil actions, and evil actions sometimes come about from the best of intentions.
That describes the interior and exterior of individuals, but what about collectives? The cultural context (mutually agreed upon conventions and ideas) will have some influence on what any particular individual considers to be bad. This is especially true at amber mythic, but even at orange or later stages, there is some degree of cultural influence. If orange is the cultural norm, it would be considered bad for a person to have the opinion that slavery is okay.
Cultural norms also influence (and are influenced by) the external societal structures. You certainly won't find many cattle farms in a culture that holds cows to be sacred! These collective economic structures, in turn, will influence the behavior of individuals; if there aren't supermarket shelves stocked with beef products, it's much more difficult to deviate from the rule of not eating cows.
So we can see that
mental intention, bodily behavior, social structures, and cultural norms are mutually determinant.
So there's our integral picture of evil. To summarize:
The general movement through the levels (or stages) is to go from what is good for "me", to what is good for "my group", to what is good for "all people". And each of these basic viewpoints will manifest distinctly different types of behaviors, intentions, cultures, and societies.
But my argument was that there is value in the pursuit and value in the answers we come up with, imperfect though they may be. But you are correct, our conclusions are colored by our perspectives and this means that there can be value in many different theories, which is something I do not contest.
We definitely agree there. And the most important thing to note, in my opinion, is that
every perspective has some grain of truth, whether a big grain or a little grain, and that every perspective
also has limitations, regardless of how comprehensive it is.
However, there are, in fact, theories that have no value, and it is conceivable that there may exist a theory with no shortcomings (perhaps one that is sufficiently simple and specific in scope that there is no room for any shortcoming). The mere fact that a human came up with a theory does not lend it value; its value comes from what it seeks to accomplish, what truth it approaches.
I'm not saying that all rational theories are useful for increasing human knowledge. I'm saying that all of the major worldviews, rational or otherwise, have unique and valuable contributions to humanity.
Moreover, none of this excludes rationality as the foundation on which we build our theories. Quite the contrary: all of this is a kind of rational thinking, and I believe it all exists within the same space. I'm not sure I agree with arranging these different kinds of thought in a hierarchy at all when there are, as you said, shortcomings and things of value within each, though I see them all as a subset of the realm of rational thought.
Again, I'm not discussing theories. I'm discussing the ways in which human beings make sense of the world, not all of which involve rational theories.
The reason that pluralistic and integral worldviews are higher or deeper than the rational one is because they both transcend rationality by introducing
new and emergent truths that are not found in a rational worldview, while also incorporating the principles of logic and reasoning. It is simply inaccurate to call them a subset of rationality. That's like saying that molecules are a subset of atoms, or that calculus is a subset of arithmetic. Molecules have properties that are found nowhere in the domain of singular atoms, and calculus has properties that are not found in arithmetic.
However, I don't see how this supports your conclusion at the end that "each and every worldview needs to be honored and included." Every worldview? All-inclusive? The fact that there are multiple truths and even more perspectives does not mean that some things are not objectively wrong.
There are two reasons that every worldview needs to be honored and included, or in other words that every
stage of development needs to have room to be a legitimate
station in life.
The first is that all of the later worldviews are built on top of the earlier ones, so to speak;
the earlier worldviews are the necessary foundation for the later ones. For example, as a person moves from a rule/role identity (common in the mythic stage) to an autonomous self-identity (common in the rational stage), one does not cease to have clearly defined roles, nor does one abandon the rules agreed upon by society. One simply does not restrict the self-identity to those rules and roles: at the autonomous stage, a person is
primarily a unique individual, and the roles you play are a part of that deeper or wider self-sense.
The second is that each worldview has a unique emergent truth, which is incorporated by the later stages, but does not originate from those later stages. The rules of society and roles that we play (father, son, salesman, artisan, sportsman, nerd, regular guy, etc.) emerged historically as a major force in human relations during the mythic-agrarian period of humanity, and individually these emerge as the primary method of meaning-making around the time of early adolescence. In essence,
at each stage there is a unique "lesson" that must be learned in order to successfully make a stable transition to the next stage.
In addition, it's not clear why this process of transformation should occur at all. It seems that as the limitations of any stage produce greater and greater frustration within either the individual or the society, that there are two options: move to a "higher" reality or face a catastrophic breakdown. We can see this at work time and time again, when people are faced with the most dire of circumstances, and they either spontaneously develop a deeper understanding that allows them to effectively deal with the problems, or they regress and eventually come up against the same type of frustration again.
Since
transformation is not currently a "reliable" phenomenon, so to speak, it becomes important to have
translation that allows one to live at any particular stage in the most healthy way possible.
And this all-inclusive approach is not some lofty, massively complex and unattainable idea. It turns out that there is actually a relatively simple and elegant way to weave the frayed threads of human endeavors into a harmonious tapestry, without just saying that everything is equal and leaving it at that. Nor do you need to evolve to an integral stage of development to put this approach into practice, thank goodness.
What you need to accomplish this is an
integral framework, which consists of, at the very least,
levels of evolutionary development, which unfold over time, and
quadrants of reality, which is a succint way of referring to the interiors and exteriors of individuals and collectives, or the 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd- person perspectives of any thing or event. These are called "orienting generalizations", and you can't reduce any of these components to any of the others.
There are also
lines,
states, and
types that exist as irreducible orienting generalizations, but as long as you're taking into account both levels and quadrants, you're there. You are being genuinely all-inclusive. More on the integral framework here:
https://integrallife.com/integral-post/integral-operating-system
Now, you mention what you call "pluralist" and "integral" modes of thinking. The obvious flaw in how you describe this pluralism is that treating all theories and views as equally right is patently absurd, as it makes no particular argument more or less valid than any other; contradictions become universal truths and there is no room for argument, as everyone is simultaneously completely right and completely wrong, and thus the distinction is utterly meaningless, and by extension, so is all debate. However, perhaps the flaw is in your interpretation of the idea; the quote you mentioned doesn't seem to suggest what you've said. Rather, it seems to suggest just what you said earlier: that truth is colored by perspective. Perhaps the quote wasn't sufficient to understand what the author meant by pluralism, though.
Yes, the "asperctival chaos", as it's called, of the pluralistic worldview is not directly addressed by that quotation. The idea is that since all truths are contextually-bound, there is no way to say that one truth is any better or any worse than another. Saddam Hussein isn't a bad man, he's just misunderstood and furthermore he is a product of his environment, so you can't blame him for his actions or call him evil. He only seems that way from an outsider's perspective.
This is an extreme example, obviously, but surely you've heard these type of arguments made before. I know I have. Yet despite the shortcomings of such a view - the fact that from this standpoint you could neither hold Saddam accountable nor criticize him in any way - there is an important truth here. Neither Saddam or anyone else lives and grows in a vacuum. All of our supposedly "individual" thoughts and beliefs and actions are partly shaped by the world around us.
Which means, as I illustrated with the video in my last post, that there is no single pregiven reality. This is far and away from assuming that there is simply one objective world that we perceive in an empirical fashion! That's the essential insight of the postmodern worldview, and it is the emergent truth - not found in the rational worldview - that distinguishes the two stages.
And since we've been discussing stages, I want to make it very clear that they are not a sort of clean cut and rigidly divided thing. There
are certain distinguishing markers or milestones, but it's not like you go to bed viewing the world in a strictly monological rational fashion and wake up the next day in asperctival chaos. There is a degree of fluidity, and to some extent it would be more accurate to use the term "waves" of development than "stages". But then, while "wave" is much more nuanced than "stage", it is also much less clear.
Generally speaking, a person whose "center of gravity" is, say, ethnocentric, will be capable of understanding worldcentric concepts, and will revert to egocentric behavior under times of stress or pressure.
