Welcome to the Congress of Integral Politics
It is my pleasure and honor to welcome all of you to this
year's gathering of the Congress of Integral Politics. We
live in very exciting - and very dangerous - times, and
there are many people (including myself and most of
you, I'm sure) who feel that only Integral approaches to our problems will
suffice. For the first time in history, most of our deep and wicked problems are
now global-generated and global in scale, and nothing less than global
thinking and global paradigms and meta-paradigms will be able to challenge
and eventually solve these problems.
For example, the Integral stage of development (individually and collectively)
is the first stage of human development in all of history that is truly
comprehensive and all-inclusive. All of the previous, earlier stages of
development (e.g., magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic) believe that their views,
and their views alone, are true and real, while all other views are wrong,
childish, illusory, or simply mistaken. This creates enormous internal cultural
frictions, and all sorts of "culture wars," with premodern versus modern
versus postmodern. But Integral levels recognize the partial truths in all
stages of development, and thus Integral levels present the first truly inclusive
and embracing values and worldviews. An Integral society would be a truly
enlightened society, with room for all, malice toward none, and inclusivity the
hall-mark. What a revolution this would truly be!
This is what an Integral Politics is aiming for. Needless to say, it is a complex
and complicated task - and yet we are at the historical and evolutionary point
where we realize nothing less than Integral will do, and thus we need to
commit ourselves - body, mind, heart, and spirit - to bringing such a society
into being. I send all my love and best wishes to all of you here who are
committed to this noble, good, true, and beautiful venture.
Ken Wilber
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