by Jeff Salzman
I received a critique from a reader regarding my previous posting, “Maureen Dowd and Liberal Flaccidity”. It represents a very common criticism of integral theory, so after responding on the comments section, I thought I’d publish it here. First the letter:
…“it’s safe to say she’s green” “She also appears to be Enneagram Four.” “So everything is a psychodrama for her.”
Really?
Statements like these are why I cannot take as seriously as I might the simplistic, sweeping categorizations and the overly chart-dependent nature of integral understanding and language. You make statements like this with such confidence and, I presume (I may be wrong) that you’ve never even met Dowd or had a one-on-one conversation with her. How do you know “what” she is on any one of your charts or diagrams (assuming that any one of them actually mirrors or accurately captures anything as complex as human nature)?
I write columns/blogs for a large metropolitan paper and I get this kind of simplistic feedback all the time. People fail to remember that, as writers, we are a “persona” and that all our columns, blogs, etc. reflect not our actual selves in their fullness and nuance, but the persona we have constructed for the medium for which we write. At best, the critics are dealing with a “character” or “spin-off” of the actual person – not the person herself.
So, if you said “Dowd’s column here represents Enneagram 4″ or “green” that would be more accurate in my view – also more sophisticated and less presumptuous.
But, the drive to categorize and locate on a scale and place in a quadrant blah blah blah is so strong . . . . What is that about? Is it because you want a theory of everything and everybody?
This doesn’t seem very “evolved” to me.
Here’s my response:
No, I’ve never met Maureen Dowd, or spoken to her. I guess I am responding to her writing “persona,” which is well-established, and floridly, brilliantly crafted after many years. I doubt it represents an actual person who is substantially different typologically. At any rate, she’s a public figure, well-celebrated, and part of my goal here is to make integral theory more useful by pointing out its manifestations in real life.
And no, of course integral charts and diagrams don’t “capture” anything as complex as human nature, any more than any map captures the territory it represents. But they sure are useful! And the higher the resolution of the map, the more useful (go to a Google map and move the cursor toward the plus-sign, and you’ll see what I mean). Thus integral’s “drive to categorize and locate on a scale and place in a quadrant blah blah blah…”
Finally, I disagree that a theory of everything is necessarily not “very evolved”. If it helps us see more deeply and clearly than before, it certainly is.
The subject of one level becomes the object of the subject of the next level. If there is a “charge” involved, then an apparent mapping of some external object’s Kosmic Address may actually be an initial mapping of one’s own projections – one’s own complexes as they constellate and thereby inform us – this harmonic resonance may be the switch which turns on our various internal perspectives thus allowing us “see into” from more than one angle .
Now that’s not to say that the external object (Dowd’s essay) doesn’t have a hook to hang the projection on, it very well may, and so this is telling us something about both our internal (personal and cultural contexts) and the exterior thing itself.
An Integral mathematics of complex perspectives is needed in order to separate these things out. Will post one to Integrallife.com soon.
Joe
Hi Jeff,
I liked your points, but when you say that theories of everything help you “see more clearly and deeply than before,” in relation to what? Is that a truly universal statement? Just curious what you’d think about that. Especially because, differing perspectives, even differing meta-theories, can elucidate different things. I write this as a fellow “evolutionary,” in the sense that I am a student of the evolution of consciousness, and follow a spiritual path this is deeply related to the ideas of emergence and world transformation.
Thanks,
Jeremy
Hey Jeremy, as a point of clarification I said IF a theory of everything helps us see more clearly then it represents evolution. That’s true of every theory, whether “of everything” or not. Conversely, there are many theories of everything that do quite the opposite (I’m in Germany and just visited the Holocaust museum, so Nazism comes quickly to mind), and they are regressive. My point was to counter the idea that “theories of everything” are by their very nature non-evolutionary.
Thanks, man, for reading and writing!
Hi Jeff! Thanks for the response.
Well, I like your articulation here about theories of everything helping us see clearly. I hope they do! And I hope that more contemporary theories of everything do help us see, rather than fog our vision. Standing on the mountain top, we might not see the problems below. This is just a dilemma I’ve been contemplating lately with regards to integral theory. I think it’s so important to be fluidic in our modern philosophies: moving from the micro to the macro, back to the micro again. Hope that makes sense!
I agree with your main point here, though, Jeff, that theories of everything can be insightful. Are they evolutionary? Well, I don’t believe they necessarily anti-evolutionary. But we have to be careful how we use them. Anyhow, thanks again. I’ll be listening in on future Daily Evolver podcasts, and will try to comment whenever I’ve got some time.
-Jer
Jeff,
Your blog is moving fast to the top of my blogroll. I have been listening to your conversations with David, but didn’t know this existed. I’ve been emailing them to my son and it’s making for some seriously good dialogue.
As relates to the blowback, I do think you missed the core of your reader’s critique. The very words, “She also appears to be an Enneagram Four.” “So everything is a psychodrama for her” speak to a sort of reductionism that makes it difficult for Enneagram teachers to be taken seriously because, as your critic pointed out, persona was privileged over fullness and nuance. I bristled when I read that line as well as it felt as if her interiors weren’t being fully appreciated.
And, as a Narrative Enneagram teacher, we teach by type panelist inquiry so it’s pretty taboo to make those kinds of determinations in a public forum without any access to the interiors of the person we’re typing. Psychodrama isn’t exclusive to Fours.
When I was in Narrative training, we were shown movie clips and asked to type the characters given the body language, attentional stance and relationship focus. There was lively debate in our discussions as we had to point to fine distinctions and back them up. At the end, no definitive answers were offered.
With that said, Tom Condon, who teaches the Enneagram and NLP once told a group of us: “The worst way to abuse the Enneagram is to run around typing everyone. The best way to learn the Enneagram is to run around typing everyone.” So, on that note, I’ll say most Enneagram students and teachers wonder if Dowd isn’t a counterphobic Six given her focus of attention on authorities and argumentative style. But then that would mean Sixes are the only ones who like a good tussle and have issues with authority.
The whole point is that yes, behaviors and attentional stance give us information about interiors, but we’re never going to know without inquiry. So a boatload of qualifiers are necessary to keep it clean and clear.
Again, thanks for the Daily Evolver. I love what you’re doing. Leslie
Thanks Leslie, for the appreciation and for the correction. I take both to heart.
WOW! You, Jeff, actually said this? : …”it’s safe to say she’s green.” “She also appears to be an enneagram Four.” “So everything is a psychodrama for her.” ? Well, if this is true then I say, hell man, we are doing so much better than I would imagine given this context. -K