Open Integral

Edward Berge

Here is more on Lady Gaga from our Ning IPS discussion. (See our past Gaia discussion on her here.)

theurj:

I know, there might be some controversy in putting her in this category. But I truly think she fits here and will make that case. I’ve already started in the commentary to her photo and video which I’ll copy-and-paste here. Also see our previous Gaia discussion at this link in Google docs. For me “spirituality” encompasses many things, including acceptance, love and liberation. I think she is about all three and more, and certainly in a postmodern context-media.

Also recall one of the most moving scenes from Avatar, when the tribe is gathering around the Mother Tree, singing-chanting, swaying-dancing, evoking imagery, invoking Goddess. I get this same feeling watching Gaga, the same deep connection to my primal roots, freeing me to sing and dance along, breaking the bonds of convention and being true to all my relations.

I want your ugly, I want your disease

I want your love

Love, love, love I want your love.

Reply by Balder

Yes, I think so too. I like some of her lyrics, and I appreciate her quirky “twisting” of the pop-video-diva role. But I guess I’m a bit conservative, because I don’t see much “postmetaphysical spiritual” value in her new Telephone video. I’m actually really tired of the glorification of “Red” to the exclusion of, and at the expense of, most other values and perspectives that prevails in a lot of the slickest popular media.

In popular mainstream media, if I have to choose something (I don’t listen to or view it much), I actually resonate more with something like this, believe it or not. The celebration of simple human compassion and care. The damn thing almost made me cry this morning.

Reply by theurj

I had a negative reaction to the Telephone video at first too (see link to original discussion). But this was my comment to her photo in our gallery, taken from that video:

“She’s wearing glasses made of burning cigarettes. As you might know, in prison smokes are literally capital and highly valuable. If effect this photo is a statement on how we are chained to, and see everything through, barter-colored lenses. We are prisoners to our market-created desires and our capacity to afford them.”

I’m going back to the Telephone vid with new “glasses” and things like the above are dawning on me. Such message are powerful liberators, methinks.

I also made this comment to the Bad Romance video:

“Note the one scene where she’s in stop-motion and glistening, crystal beads are all around her, like the Indra’s Net photo in the gallery.”

That particular scene really evoked Indra’s net for me. I don’t know if that was her intention but it did so nonetheless. Especially in the stop-motion, like a freeze-frame, indicating how each moment or individual is apparently on its own but really connected to each other moment or individual with continued motion or reflection in every other.

Now I realize I might be reading into what I see, adding my own meaning. Well of course, as do we all! That’s a main point of postmetaphysics, that we create the meaning and that the object or art or whatever has no given meaning, of itself, in itself, by itself. Indra personally told me so.

Reply by theurj

And then there’s the chant that start’s Bad Romance:

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!

She is invoking Rama into herself! Holy shit! Rama, the avatar of Vishnu no less. Hmmm.

Reply by theurj

I’m also thinking that the diner scene is metaphoric. Beyonce’s lover treats her like an object, like shit so she poisons him. This could be a social commentary on abusive relationships, how they are poisonous. Same with when Gaga poisons the rest of the diner patrons. Perhaps it’s a statement on how Americans eat? How such fare as is found in diners is usually full of fat, salt and sugar and leads to obesity and diabetes? In other words, how we poison ourselves through diet?

Reply by theurj

Let’s address her bisexuality and the rumor that she is a hermaphrodite. She admits to the former and in an interview with Barbara Walters denies the latter. Of course this issue was addressed in the first minute of her latest video Telephone, where her clothing is stripped off and she gives a crotch shot to the camera in a see-through leotard. It is obvious she had no dick and one guard remarks to the other: “See, I told you she didn’t have a dick.”

The point is not so much that she is a medical hermaphrodite but that she has become a mythical or metaphorical hermaphrodite. The term comes from the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, Hermaphroditis. The latter is turned into a bi- or intersexual when Salmacis merges with him in her pool of water. Mythologically a hermaphrodite represents the union of male and female within any individual, mystically referred to as “the marriage of heaven and earth.” This also refers to the mystical marriage between an individual with God or deity. Some might contend that the former requires the latter, that we must balance the sexes within ourselves in preparation for the greater marriage of this balanced self with the divine. In modern mythology this story is played out in Peter Pan.

On a mundane level Gaga’s admitted bisexuality is an exemplar for breaking the convention of only engaging with the opposite sex. It also breaks the convention of monogamy. Granted both have significant survival and social functions in perpetuating and maintaining the species. But developmentally beyond this, when these functions have been satisfied for the species as a whole, is opening to a wider range of liberating love to more than one partner and more than one’s own sex. As we all know sexual love is quite powerful, especially when sublimated in tantric techniques beyond only physical ejaculation, to elicit higher centers of consciousness development. And within this methodology there is no restriction on polyamory or bisexuality. Liberation and unconditional love know no boundary.

So the rumor that Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite is but an expression of the larger, cultural mythology that she is a child of the mystical marriage, a communicant and exemplar of marriage within herself and with the divine, and her message (Hermes) is love (Aphrodite).

Reply by theurj

I was watching American Idol last night and to my surprise and delight Lady Gaga performed her latest single Alejandro. Of course it’s already on YouTube so check it out. It’s actually a quite good samba and she shows off some of her piano skills, on which she is classically trained. There is a brief acoustic intro of Bad Romance as a lead-in.

I”m going to let Edie Brickell sing it today, from her song by the above title:

I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box.
Religion is the smile on a dog.
I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are – or what?
I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
Religion is a light in the fog.
I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are – or what?
Don’t let me get too deep.

I am inspired by the dance of Sam and Denise Miller. They are the current classic and showcase country world champions. If you’d like to see their worlds-winning performances see this link and scroll down a bit. I am awestruck and deeply moved by their dancing.

One of the things I think the integral movement should be doing is discussing integral policy proposals. At the moment there’s a lot of fine talk about theory but little talk about how the theory should be applied to real world problems. So I’ll get the ball rolling…

There’s ben a debate in Oz over gay marriage. The conservative federal government is against it but around 50% of the population support it. This means that if it were to go to a popular vote it would likely pass (I think 38% were opposed, 12% undecided). Some of the rhetoric coming from the conservatives states dramatically that the family is the foundation of civilization. What utter bullshit. The advent of gay marriage will not cause the collapse of civilization. What it will do however, is undermine the conservative Christian belief that families must be monogamous and heterosexual. But does integral theory support this view?

Clearly not. The advent of ‘family’ politics is what we call in Oz a ‘dog whistle’ issue. The term family is code that conservative Christians understand clearly but which is not so clearly heard by others. Family is code for ‘conservative Christian values’. So when a conservative Christian political party is formed it calls itself ‘Family First’ – iow, conservative Christians first.

Now from an integral pov we would understand that families come in all sorts of combinations and patterns, from complicated tribal families based on clan and totem affiliations, to polygamous and polyandrous configurations. I would suggest there is no evidence to suggest that heterosexual, monogamous ‘marriages’ are better in any way. A key issue is the raising of children, but there seems to be no developmental studies that suggest the ‘nuclear’ family is superior. In fact, the research I have done suggests otherwise. Children may develop quicker with a greater contact with multiple adult role models. Research done on children raised in Kibbutz have indicated a greater level of moral reasoning than their non-Kibbutz peers. In the radical kibbutzim children were raised in peer groups, sleeping in dorms. The idea was to break apart the bourgeois nuclear family and avoid the Freudian oedipus/electra complex. In the more radical kibbutzim both sexes slept in the same dorm and showered and toileted together (up until 18). Some kibbutzim even allowed sexual experimentation, at least theoretically. One dramatic result of this type of child rearing was actually not the expected sexual liberation but the development of a self-imposed puritanical sexual code amongst adolescents, with a notable reluctance to marry within the peer group. Iow, the peers tended to see each other as siblings and became asexual, only seeking partners outside the kibbutz. Otherwise, children raised in this manner went on to lead successful lives.

I would suggest that integral theory would allow people to form any type of partnership arrangement they so wish (they do any way). The question then becomes one about the legal status of partners, especially in relation to the care of children and the management of joint assets. In which case the state should recognize the rights of all partners, whether in a monogamous or polyamorous, hetero or homo arrangement. There is no reason the state should favour the ideal Christian family.

Just a note – the origin of the idea of the Christian family is curious. For a start Jesus never married and urged his disciples to leave their families. He advocated complete devotion to the spiritual path. Paul was not much better. So when exactly did the idea of the nuclear family become conflated with Christianity? Wasn’t the Mormon argument for polygamy based on the Bible?

On another topic now – film. In my view it’s one of the true integral arts. It requires the correct balance of multiple skills, photography, set design, music, sound, montage, writing, acting, etc. The master director must be proficient in so many fields, and now especially, in the technical fields of the digital arts.

The breakout film for me has been Sin City, for its fusion of manga inspired artwork and moving image. My thesis for my degree was in the digital future (written in 84). I evisaged exactly where we are now, twenty years later (with some way still to go, mainly in distribution). What I didn’t forsee was the rise of the internet. What we are now on the crest of is a massive wave of small, independent digital fims distributed via the internet. These will increase in quality as the technology improves and as the market improves (and returns increase feeding into larger budgets).

Another breakout film – following a different emerging trend – is the Oz film ‘Ten Canoes’. It’s a collaboration between Aboriginals from Arnhem Land and Rolf De Heer (from an idea put to him by David Gulpilil – I’ve met David, he stayed overnight at a house I shared in Sydney). It’s about an Aboriginal clan and it’s set a thousand years before white contact. It is told entirely from the Aboriginal perspective and it makes few concessions to Western sensibilities. I’m particularly interested because if I were to return to film making I would want to do ethnographically and historically accurate stories from within the perspective of a given culture, without modifying it for Western sensibilities. I’d love to do a film about pre-contact Nuba in Africa; a film about the real Helen of Troy, Queen of Sparta (or about Sparta and Athens as they truly were); and a film about pre-Muslim India in a kingdom influenced by tantra. The only mildly disappointing thing about ‘Ten Canoes’ was that they did modify the nudity in order to cater to various concerns. The men go naked and there’s no lack of full frontal male nudity, but the women were posed to avoid it, or wore discreet patches, perhaps to avoid shots of protruding labia. Whatever the case the facts of pre-white Aboriginal life is that many Aboriginal tribes went fully naked, not even bothering to cover genitals. Otherwise the film was praise worthy for not shying away from other topics – the fact that one of the main characters had three wives, with one of them being quite young (early teens); the vulgar humour and the violence (the spearing death of an innocent man).

So why would ‘Ten Canoes’ be integral – for its capacity to enter another worldview and encourage multi-perspectivism. The trouble with so many historical/ethnographic films is that they are mediated through modern, Western sensibilities. Are we ready to see an accurate film about ancient Greece with its overtly homoerotic culture, for the sight of the Spartan gymnopaedia – the festival of naked children in which both girls and boys competed in a variety of sports and dances?

Finally – I think the integral art that has yet to even begin to reach its potential as integral artform is computer gaming. Imagine a multilevel game that replicates developmental levels rendered by innovative animators, visual artists, musicians, soundscapists, etc, etc. It ain’t been done yet folks but I sure as hell know how I’d do it.

Ray