Transpartisanship, Revisited

I am genuinely very interested in both spirituality and postmodernism, but I've taken this jaunt into those territories lately because of the way spirituality can be used to disguise first tier thinking as second tier "awareness." Why is that worth talking about? How we view yellow and second tier thought has fairly substantial implications for how we think about yellow interacting with the rest of the world. That is, the theory impacts the practice. As Sean Saiter said, "carefully constructed and stable theories are at the heart of nearly every single major course of deliberate action that the modern and postmodern world has seen."

So, this takes us all the way back to the beginning, when, in my first real post, I discussed partisanship and various reactions to it. In looking at orange, green, and yellow, I offered four loose definitions...

, which were:

• non-partisan -- blending or balancing the sides (ORANGE)
• contra-partisan -- against the idea of having sides (GREEN)
• omni-partisan -- on everyone's side (GREEN/yellow)
• trans-partisan -- willing to act in ways that please or anger any side (YELLOW)

Let's see if I can tie these together.

My argument recently has been that green sometimes hides from itself using the concept of transrational awareness as a justification for its (inevitable) judgments and preferences. This provides a loophole in pluralism, a way to weasel out of the strange contradictions of postmodernism -- much needed, in my opinion.

However, this particular avenue of resolving the issues with post-modernism is itself rather problematic. As I've pointed out in the past, justifications based on awareness are completely immune to both examination and criticism, since awareness is an entirely subjective, experiential (UL quadrant) kind of thing. This has a second important consequence: by claiming awareness, we provide a convenient cover for shadow material -- that is, parts of ourselves that got left behind as we grew and that we've hidden from ourselves over time. The implication is that what consciously seems to be "transrational" may actually be pre-rational, and we ourselves wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Since awareness can't be judged from outside, using it as a justification offers a nigh-impregnable psychological defense. This leads inexorably to an unpleasant conclusion: Awareness can't be judged by third parties, since it's internal and subjective, but neither can it be judged by first persons, since they may be hiding parts of themselves that are too painful to see.

Aligning spiritual awareness with second tier thought also creates a second big downside: it creates a slippery slope toward substituting spiritual awareness for new thinking. When old thinking (i.e. shadow) can dress up in new clothes and call itself "transrational," the call for new thinking that handles the problems of postmodernism is dramatically muted. In my experience, this seems to lead to consciously held contra-partisanship or omni-partisanship, infused with spirituality and unconscious notes of either apartisanship (i.e. egocentric red) or intense partisanship (i.e. group-centric blue.) I'll caricature it this way: everyone ought to get along, all viewpoints should be respected, and because I have (or my group has) spiritual awareness, I am a better judge of things than you, so you ought to take my word for it. It's a way for green to claim authority that it otherwise couldn't justify.

It has recently occurred to me that certainly personality types like certain memes better than others. I think we may find the root of the above position in this connection. I, for example, being a withdrawn and mental type, have a certain affinity for the orange meme. It calls for a detached observer and lots of deductive thought, and lo and behold, that's where I'm most comfortable being and what I'm most comfortable doing. Now consider someone who is social yet conflict averse. Where would they be most comfortable on the spiral? I'd wager it's green. What would they have repressed? I'd wager it's some combination of red and blue. And what would be the effects of using spirituality as a cover? By allowing an outlet valve for energy that would otherwise build up and cause problems, such a maneuver would actually allow them to strengthen the repression without going insane. Any egocentric or potentially conflict causing desire would be repressed into shadow, hyper-pluralism would exert an irresistable pull, and legitimately yellow thought would be unnecessary, having been supplanted by supposed spiritual awareness, which then justifies any irruption of shadow into speech or deed.

This general configuration seems rather common in the boomer generation. I'd guess that some people became conflict averse because of green, and others liked green because they were already conflict averse. Whatever the reason, this points toward a key place where trans-partisanship differs from contra-partisanship and omni-partisanship, where yellow differs from green and super-green. Trans-partisans are willing to make people angry and to cause conflicts, when they feel it is necessary. That is not to say that conflict is relished for its own sake, or that mindless provocation is called for. It simply means that, when it's time for discernment, yellow is willing to strongly reject things. Yellow is as much about what it rejects as what it includes.

Yes, there is a place for purple, but I can and should stridently reject human sacrifice. Yes, there is a place for red, but I can and should strongly object to brutal subjugation and dictatorial rule. Yes, there is a place for blue, but I can and should fiercely oppose ethnic cleansing and religious warfare. Yes, there is a place for orange, but I can and should renounce every-man-for-himself capitalism at any price. Yes, there is a place for green, but I can and should reject the psychosis of aperspectival madness and the hypocrisy of radical pluralism.

Each one of these rejections is likely to make certain people angry. In dealing with first tier memes, that's often called for. If I hold my values to be legitimately more developed, higher, better, then I must be willing to take action on them even when doing so goes against the demands of less developed value systems. This requires discernment, not only of the obvious edge cases, but also of more subtle relative merits. Certain expressions of the first tier memes are better than others. Some sets of rules and roles are more consistent, more coherent, more useful, and more egalitarian than others. As a yellow thinker, it's up to me to puzzle out which are which, and then to encourage one and discourage the other (in ways that are consonant with the blue meme.) This idea extends to yellow's interaction with all of the first tier memes. Relate to them where they are, but take action from where you are.

Wilber says it well:

The Bodhisattva of wisdom is Manjushri, who is always depicted with a sword in one hand and a book in the other hand. The sword is not symbolic, even less is it peaceful. It is the sword of discriminating wisdom, or wisdom that discerns depth. In order to possess wisdom, one must be able to judge greater depth from lesser depth, such as more inclusive from less inclusive, second tier from first tier, and integral from partial. [...]

Being more inclusive means being able to reject less inclusive, reject those perspectives that marginalize others. Extending compassion to that which marginalizes is not real compassion but idiot compassion: in our understandable desire to be compassionate, we extend compassion to that which actually hurts somebody. Not being able to tell the difference is idiot compassion. And the green meme operates all too often with idiot compassion, compassion without judgment of depth, compassion without a sword. The green meme version of Manjushri probably has him carrying not a sword but a wooden spoon. Not the sword of wisdom but the wooden spoon of idiot compassion, so that not only does he not lop off [...] heads, he won't even ruffle a feather.

So, if you're looking for trans-partisans, and you're looking for people who hold all of the values of first tier, you're looking in the wrong place. Instead, look for people who have new thinking and new values, who are expressing something with an element of radical novelty. Look for people who are willing to reject any of the first tier values when it contradicts their purpose and their vision. Look for people who are willing to make people angry when they deem it necessary.