Catallaxis

My Integral Practice

Daniel O'Connor  |  Integral Ventures, LLC

In the context of personal development, an Integral Practice may be defined as an integrated set of developmental practices designed to enhance one's experience of life and support one's contribution to the world. I first encountered the idea of an Integral Practice in 1993, in the final chapter of a veritable encyclopedia of human potential: The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature by Michael Murphy. Based on a breathtaking variety of research accumulated over the years, Murphy outlined in considerable detail about a dozen different types of metanormal human capacities that appear to be latent in us all, awaiting development through various transformative practices. With these metanormal capacities in mind and evidently drawing inspiration from Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, Murphy proposed a contemporary approach to personal development that would integrate physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual practices into what he called Integral Practices, flexibly self-designed to gradually awaken one's latent human potential.

This idea of Integral Practice and the research behind it was particularly appealing to me because, in 1993 at the age of 27, I had just completed an intensive wilderness sabbatical in which I engaged in my own self-designed Integral Practice of solo backpacking and mountaineering, journaling and reading in psychology and philosophy, and sitting and walking meditation. In fact, I could trace my experience with various approaches to Integral Practice all the way back to the age of 14, when I began training in Shaolin Kung Fu, one of the oldest forms of body-mind-spirit cultivation. Murphy's book gave me a language to describe what I had figured out for myself through a combination of intuition and experimentation. I have since then been engaged to varying degrees from one year to the next, during the many ups and downs of my life, in a slowly evolving Integral Practice that supports all my work in the world. For whatever it might be worth to those who read this article, I would like to share a general outline of the core components of my Integral Practice. 

Integral Praxiology: A Primer

Daniel O'Connor  |  Integral Ventures, LLC

Integral Praxiology is an inquiry into the possibility of an integral science of human action. My approach to the study of human action is a form of integral reconstruction. As a reconstruction, my intent is to clarify and formalize the tacit knowledge and intuitive competencies that must, logically, be pre-supposed by people in order for them to act in any situation. In other words, I am attempting to make theoretically explicit those pre-theoretical perspectives, practices, and propositions that appear, on very close examination, to be governing the actions of people in the full variety of worldly contexts. As a distinctively integral reconstruction, my intent is to acknowledge and integrate all the essential pre-conditions necessary for a theory of human action that honors the full potential of the human experience. Hence, I will attempt to demonstrate that these distinctively integral perspectives, practices, and propositions are themselves pre-supposed by people in all their actions, however unrealized their full human potential may be expressed in these actions, and therefore unavoidable elements of this theoretical reconstruction.

Integral Praxiology, therefore, represents an attempt to make theoretically explicit those pre-theoretical perspectives, practices, and propositions that appear to be governing the actions of people in their efforts to realize their full potential in real-world situations. In pursuing this line of inquiry, I gratefully incorporate and, where necessary, reformulate the extraordinary insights of three primary theorists—Ken Wilber, Jürgen Habermas, and Chris Argyris—and a host of secondary theorists whose collective body of work already delivers most of what one might wish to discover through such an inquiry. Thus, in my preliminary efforts to frame an integral science of human action that is as realistic as it is idealistic and as fallibilistic as it is humanistic, with a pragmatic focus on how people can, should, and already do act in the world, my contribution may be little more than a clarification of my own particular vision of integral philosophy. Nevertheless, the novelty of this vision and its demonstrated capacity to re-interpret and re-focus established views within the field of integral philosophy should justify the effort required of the reader.

Beginning with the self-evident reality of human action—that people act—the question arises as to the ideal conditions that must be pre-supposed by people in order for them to act in any situation. Is it possible to articulate any fundamental pre-suppositions of human action that can withstand our efforts to invalidate them, through logic as well as direct experience, and at least approach a believable universality?

The Political Economics of Stephen Colbert

Daniel O'Connor  |  Integral Ventures, LLC

Stephen Colbert, brilliant satirist, unrepentant frankenwordsmith, and charismatic host of The Colbert Report, has recently added another neologism to the English language: wikiality.  As strange as it may sound, this new concept, together with his previous creation, truthiness, can help us understand what's so wrong with the political economic discourse in the United States.

Truthiness

According to Wikipedia, "Truthiness is a humorous term coined by Stephen Colbert in reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or from the gut without regard to evidence, logic, or intellectual examination.  Mr. Colbert created this definition of the word during the first episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called The Word."

"By using the term as part of his satirical routine, Colbert sought to critique the tendency to rely upon truthiness, and its use as an appeal to emotion and tool of rhetoric in contemporary socio-political discourse.  He particularly applied it to President Bush's modus operandi in nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and in deciding to invade Iraq."

Of course, the only way to appreciate Colbert's satire is to see it for yourself in this Colbert Report video: The Word Truthiness. 

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Truthiness
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

As he later told the Associated Press, "you don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut."  That is, unless you can look it up on Wikipedia, as I did... which brings us to Colbert's second great addition to the English lexicon.