Open Integral

Reading the last entry on the cult risk of I-I prompts me to start recounting my experience with Ken, Don Beck and I-I. It’s a dismal, winter’s day – which is my excuse for writing two entries in a day (I was planning to scan transparancies from my DTE days but the scanner is stuffed).

My intro to Ken on a personal level came through Frank Visser’s site. I had written a critique of Peter Collins’ circular logic theory. Ken emailed me and thanked me for writing it, he also told me about the I-I and invited me to participate. I couldn’t afford to travel to Boulder for the first meetings, however Ken did send me a transcript of A Theory of Everything and I became a member of I-I. This was my first introduction to Spiral Dynamics. I was impressed and bought the book by Beck and Cowan. I then thought I’d apply the theory and wrote the first installment ‘Memes at War’ one Sunday afternoon. Frank published it and within a couple of days both Ken and Don had emailed me to congratulate me. Don even calling it “a brilliant analysis”. Whilst I was flattered I did think it was a bit over the top because I didn’t think it was ‘brilliant’, at least by my standards.

The ‘Memes at War’ series impressed a member of the Society for the Research into Adult Development (I’ll keep some names private simply because I do not have their permission to name them – this is not a sinister, paranoid thing, just a courtesy). I was invited to present a paper on my Temenos system (mentioned in the Memes at War series) to the 2002 conference to be held at Pace University in New York. My paper was intitled ‘The Blood Brotherhoods – a Developmental Look at Terrorism’.

My invitation to join I-I saw me alloted a place in the I-I politics sub-group, including a role on the discussion list. Through the generosity of several people on the list I had places to stay, some expenses met and a number of meetings with I-I folk arranged, including Ken.

I met with Ken in late June, 2002. Initially there was some confusion. The meeting was set for Saturday but when I rang his bell at his loft in Denver there was no answer (so I spent a useful afternoon browsing Front Page on the corner, people who’ve there will know it). There had been a stuff up. I was contacted at my hotel by Willow and a new time was set for Sunday.

I found Ken to be a generous and genial host. We talked for four hours, mostly about the work he was doing on post-metaphysics. Ken asked about my interests and talked about how I might be involved in I-I, perhaps by being the second in charge (after Greg Wilpert) of the politics branch of I-I, and also writing a book on integral politics.

I found Ken to be charming and open. However, during our talk I experienced a few odd notes. Before I describe them I need to explain something about myself. During my early 20’s I was a friend of Sue Hawke, daughter of the future PM of Australia, Bob Hawke. Through Sue and other politicians’ children (including the leader of the Victorian Labor opposition, Clyde Holding) I had mixed in circles close to political power. I was also in the Down To Earth movement which was founded by Dr Jim Cairns, a former Deputy PM and Treasurer in the Whitlam government. One of the photos I planned to post shows Jim at a planning meeting for the national DTE Berri ConFest (conference/festival). Eventually there was a difference of opinion in DTE and I was nominated to write to Jim to ask him to resign, which made the front pages of the majors. Also, as a result of my involvement in film and TV I got to mix with and meet a number of prominent actors and directors, including Mel Gibson.

Now, the point of all this name dropping is to say that I am completely underwhelmed by sycophancy and celebrities. I know that it’s all an illusion and that these folk are fallible people like the rest of us. And that’s the sour note in my meeting with Ken. He told me the story of how both Clinton and Gore had read some of his work and how they had expected Gore as VP to make a speech using integral concepts. He also proudly told me that the actors, Minnie Driver and Keanu Reeves were interested. He said it such a way that I was supposed to be impressed. But why would I be? Driver and Reeves are not all that good as actors. As for the Gore speech – I clearly remember being stunned by the naivety in the expectation that Gore would make a national speech using a still marginal theory.

In my view it was all rather grandiose and unrealistic. There was a sense of mania about it all. Sure, there was a sense of excitement and of promise, but also a sense of over-reaching and of seeking the limelight. Ken wasn’t interested in beavering away in a quiet corner, he wanted to be centre stage. What I questioned was his idea of where centre stage is. With B grade actors?

After meeting some of the central I-I folk in San Francisco I came away with the feeling that there was more than a touch of narcissism and grandiosity to the I-I project.

Then things turned sour. When I returned to Oz I started to criticize Boomeritis and Ken reacted angrily, as did Don Beck. Instead of being touted as being a potential second in charge of I-I politics I had become, in Ken’s words “an angry greed dude, with red stripes”.

There’s more to this story about Don Beck (which I will share later) – but my conclusion is simply this. As long as you reflect Ken’s brilliance back to him you are fine. As soon as you find flaws you are attacked. The private emails to me, especially from Don Beck, were outrageous. How dare I criticize them! My motives apparently, were 1. Professional jealousy and 2. Personal animosity. This is just paranoid.

So I’ve been personally burnt by both Ken and Don because I crossed a line.

Now a word of caution. Ken does listen to critics, eventually. First he will resent the criticism and then after enough people have repeated it back to him he absorbs it into his theory, without always acknowledging the source of his ‘new’ understanding – your idea becomes his idea. There is a serious ethical issue here but given that he exists outside normal peer review processes he is not under the sort of scrutiny he should be.

In general I try to refrain from psychoanalysing people. Frankly I do not know either Ken or Don well enough to accurately assess what’s going on. But I’m a good judge of character and I’m going to go way out on a limb and suggest that part of the dynamic in I-I is a type of mania (makes me wonder if Ken’s illness was not more about the polar collapse into depresion). Some forms of genius is linked to mania. There’s a good side and a bad side. The good side is genuine brilliance and creativity and real insight. The bad side is over-reach, grandiosity and paranoia. Mania causes a kind of charisma and it attracts followers. I’ve seen it in other people – but its the kind of charisma that eventually burns people. It’s also the type of charisma that demands an impossible loyalty. As far as I’m concerned Ken’s attack on his critics is consistent with a form of mania (mild, not the debilitating kind) that creates both his moments of brilliance and his moments of paranoia.

The thing is that I liked Ken, but I’m no fan of bullshit and I won’t wear it from anyone, no matter who they are.

At the moment, as far as I can tell, the dynamics of I-I are infected by Ken’s manic/charismatic personality. There are good people around him who do pull him to line, but there are also the usual sycophants and opportunists. The danger of the manic personality is that eventually they draw the sycophants closer, and it is these people who create the them/us dynamics as they try and feed off the creative energy of the cahrismatic’s mania. If Ken has not got ‘grounded’ people around him then we will see an even further circling of the wagons. This is not just about cultic behaviour because it happens in all sorts of groups, particularly in political groups under strong, charismatic and manic leaders (Hitler being an obvious and extreme example – and Dr Jim Cairns being a much milder example – you see, I’ve been there and done that, lol). Which could take us on another thread into the politics of charisma and personal power…genuine leadership is moderated by a good dose of humility and compassion.

Ray

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 8th, 2006 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Ken and I-I. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.