Societal 3-2-1 Process

The 3-2-1 Process is a key piece of the Integral Life Practice (formerly Integral Transformative Practice). The 3-2-1 Process deals with going from 3rd person (IT) to second person (You), to 1st person ownership (me, mine, I), especially as it relates to disowned, resisted inner psychological processes (shadow) and the resulting bad deeds done (projection, introjection, repression, etc.). For a good overview, check out this post from Pongsathorn.

In my on-going quest to dig into the unconscious (or maybe semi-conscious) elements of integral, in this way of teasing out the real depth there, beyond what I see to be some of the more shallow-ish interpretations, I was thinking of the notion of the 2nd-person point of view.

Mark Edwards, a non-AQAL integralist, believes the 2nd-person point of view should actually be added to the quadrants--giving the sextents: see here.

Now I wouldn't exactly go that far, but I think there is an interesting point there.

One basic argument that has swum around in the (so-called) integral ponds, is the lack of communion, I-Thou, We-space, and so forth. In another universe and lifetime I wrote a rather stupid (in retrospective) piece on the subject. So none of that, that well is quite dry.

But more on the notion of the 2nd-person perspective as it relates to other cultures, religions, societies, movements, philospohies, political camps, etc.

When Ken, correctly, states that the I-Thou (from Buber) boils down to the We, I get the sesen that people (mis)interpret that to mean you can only access the 2nd-person perspective in direct communication. Or if you don't like the 2nd-person notion, just the idea of taking more and more perspectives in a way that is something deeper than only cognitively reading about it (3rd person) and yet is not person-to-person communication (We, 1st person plural).

To sound trite, it would be reading with self-identity and heart. Learning about the worlds with a background sense of dialogue.

Like the 3-2-1 process but this time not for your disowned interior psyche, but the disowned world. In I-I, let's say, they are different manifestations of the same Oneness, both dissociations-- both problematic.

Concretely I was thinking about all of this, in relation to the question of Islam, the Arab World, and the larger (for lack of a better term) Muslim arc/world stretching from Turkey through Arab lands, Iraq, Pesia (Iran), Central Asia, into Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.

More correctly, Islams.

Now there are a lot of controversial elements to all of this--the Iraq War, election of Hamas, the cartoon protests, etc.

There hasn't been a lot of "integrally informed" takes on the subject. And the ones I have seen, generally to me don't seem to get past a tendency in the mainstream (liberal or conservative) press, blogosphere--the total lack of an 2nd person points of view.

And I would argue strongly that some multicultural version of "those poor people have been so oppressed by the Western world, blah blah" are not really to any serious degree taking "those poor people's" real lives and feelings into account. Mostly the multicults are "projecting" their own disowned guilt over being a Western onto a bunch of other people. Whatever may or may not be the validity of those feelings, they are certainly not clear enough to allow the other's point of view, feelngs, values, and emtions in very deeply.

It's probably a stretch to imagine too many playing with the notion of 3-2-1ing their own terrorist self, to sound reather New Agey.

So I'll just ask for a 2nd-person of view. Even if it is a more distanced 2nd-person, as I "dialogue" with you, in my head. Given that I'm not likely heading over to Lebanon or Kurdistan anytime soon.

In other words, there are a lot of intelligent criticisms to say the furor over the Danish publications: the rights of free press; rule of law; double standards and hypocrisy on the part of those who instiage riots that end up killing people as if God or the Prophet would want more death. All of which are true.

Take this passage from a book review by Max Rodenbeck The Economist's Middle Eastern Affairs writer.

The review, I highly recommend it, is of Peter Bergen's (the premier authority on Bin Laden) new oral history of Osama (The Osama Bin Laden I Know) and Bruce Lawrence's first translation into English (that I know of...) of bin Laden actual words.

Passage from Rodenbeck in bold:

One poll taken in Saudi Arabia in the fall of 2003 is perhaps more revealing. Close to half the respondents said they liked bin Laden's rhetoric, but fewer than 5 percent supported him as a leader.

And after arguing that one of the possible reasons for bin Laden's popularity is that he embodies the hero myth (read red meme)--son of a rich man, leaves youthful life of frivolity to live among the poor, fight for justice, uphold the traditions of the ancestors, gains the following of his from his sheer physical prowess, his connection to animals (sound like Robin Hood yet?)--Rodenbeck hits the nail on the head:

Yet even such semi-fictional status cannot fully explain the continued popularity of bin Laden. The simple fact is that even if the details of bin Laden's messages are unconvincing, his core meaning still resounds in the Muslim world. One reason for this is that his status as a hunted fugitive amplifies the message, turning it into a powerful expression of freedom. Another reason is that many competing voices in the Muslim world have lost their legitimacy, such as unpopular regimes, intellectuals "tainted" with secular, Westernized worldviews, or government-salaried clerics. But the main reason, as both Lawrence and Bergen conclude, is that much of what he says fits into a coherent narrative that can be bolstered with real evidence.

It does not require too selective a reading of history to compile a long list of Muslim grievances against the West in general, and America in particular. Lawrence cites a few examples: Winston Churchill's use of poison gas against Iraqi rebels in the 1920s; the million martyrs of Algeria's war of independence against France; the ravages caused by sanctions against Iraq; the support for repressive Arab regimes; and of course the invasion of Iraq. Then there is the issue of double standards: invading Iraq but not North Korea in search of forbidden weapons; chastising Iran for its purported nukes but not Israel; blasting Sudan and Syria for oppressing minorities but staying silent over India's repression in Muslim Kashmir, Russia's war in Chechnya, or China's harsh treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang. These are disparate policies, and have been partially compensated by more positive interventions, such as rescuing many Muslims in Darfur from starvation, or protecting the Muslim Albanians of Kosovo. But the balance is not in the West's favor.

There is the de-repressive barrier let go. Not blame ourselves multiculturalism, but just a balanced look on the sins accured in the West's catalog as they relate to the Muslim world--for background into the degree of animus. 50% like Bin Laden's rhetoric: the US should not be upholding corrupt autocracies in the Middle East; the plight of the Palestinian Refugees, etc. But only 5% (young, Salafi, zealot males, willing to kill themselves in Iraq) like his tactics.

Bin Laden is actually not in the traditional line of Islamic theology. He has created his own very selective reading of the Islamic corpus. For another brilliant article (long but worth the read) see Nir Rosen's piece of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Leader of the so-called Al-Qaeda in Meospatamia.

One of the more interesting elements in that article is the contrast between bin Laden and Zarqawi. Both are Salafi (in the West we call them Wahabis), strict so-called fundamentalist Sunni Muslims--but bin Laden advocates attacking the far enemy (The Soviets and now the US), while Zarqawi believed, like most jihadis that the real fight is against the near-enemy (the king of Jordan).

So even the Salafi jihadists, the most minor in terms of numbers (but not media coverage and influence) in the Muslim world have huge disparate fractures from within.

This 2nd-person point of view I'm advocating is to let the "other" speak and in the great tradition of phenomenology, to initially "bracket" the question of whether the contents of the mind-stream correctly describe some "real world" pre-existing out there.

In this case, we'd (temporarily, initially) stop asking whether the terrorists, the protesters, etc. "are right." As if they could be right or wrong in absentia from the entire Kosmic process. There are right and wrong elements, and we can learn these, but first we must inhabit the perspectives, find their contours, and see how they are related to the rest of the manifest perspectives. There is no foundation above or below, no fixed center, everything is absolutely relative everything else.

Politically, the reason there are insurgencies, de-facto support of rebels, some (though very few) young men willing to go commit suicide bombings, etc. are because of the grievances listed by Rodenbeck--the grievances twisted to horrific ends by bin Laden. But the grievances, if we would take the 2nd-person perspective (without all the relativistic postmodern BS), we would see these grievances are not completely out to lunch.

To real get into the praxis of all this requires deeply , existentially letting go of the notion that there is a fixed center, even a so-called integral one. There are simply worldspaces arising, there are truths and falsehoods arising in each, and the trust is that the developmental process is itself somehow salvific--that somehow simply entering these spaces and as best we can giving aid, tearing down barriers, initiating momentum to change, buildings the necessary conditions of change to stick, somehow all of that is worth the effort.

But we never really know that. That seems to be the element of faith in this "worldspace."

Otherwise just a lot of possibly intelligent responses, but metaphysical righteousness undergirding it all.

It might be profound metaphysics, creative metaphysics, insightful metaphysics, arrogant metaphysics, even arrogant and insightul metaphysics, but metaphysics it is all is.

With making explicit the "address" of any and all perspectives in Kosmic manifestation and without specifying the injunction whereby such actions, phenomena may emerge, it is all just metaphysics.

Go from the 3rd person, to the 2nd person in our world: hear their voices, learn their stories, swin their waters, even if only temporarily. At a distance, safely, wisely, but give time and space to open up these closed psychic walls.