Manifesto: Thinking About Thinking R. M. Fisher 2016

Manifesto on Thinking About

Thinking... Integrally

R. Michael Fisher

Manifesto on Thinking About Thinking... Integrally

R. Michael Fisher

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In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute

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First Edition 2016

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Cover and layout by R. Michael Fisher

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The In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute is a non-partisan not-for-profit organization founded by R. Michael

Fisher in 1991. Preference is given to works with an integral worldview/theoretical perspective.

Dedicated to

... a most important futurist-educator-integral thinker-activist, for our times, who, in the mid-1960s, wrote:

Was there going to be a new education, the beginning of a transformed society?.... [T]he human potential stands not only as a nearly limitless boon to any society but also as an enormous threat.[1]

- George B. Leonard[2]

______

Manifesto on Thinking About Thinking... Integrally

- R. Michael Fisher,[3] Ph.D.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 5

Simple Version of the Problem (Challenge) ...... 5

Complex Version of the Problem (Challenge) ...... 7

Background Context: How To Read This Manifesto ...... 7

Integral Defined ...... 13

Brief Story: Thoughts About Grade One ...... 14

Rationale: First Questions First ...... 17

Manifesto: Imagining an Integral Thinking Curriculum...... 20

An Integral Thinking Curriculum Idea ...... 22

Comments on the Integral Thinking Curriculum Idea ...... 24

Appendix 1: Template Design (Cards) ...... 27

Abstract

Someone asked me, “What do you do?” I replied, “I am an educator.” They said, “So, what do you teach?” I replied, “First, I design curricula based on how best to teach—thinking about thinking. Then, I teach others how to implement that curriculum so they get as excited as I do about the great human potential of thinking integrally across the globe.” The following manifesto is my first articulation of the ideas and rationale for why, after 40+ years of research and teaching, I have chosen to focus on thinking about thinking. I lay out the simple and complex versions of the problem—which, boil down to the problem of how humans self-regulate, self-violate, and typically fail to manage difference, diversity of perspectives and ways of thinking effectively. I offer some premises behind my integral design for Education and the ways it can be implemented. This is a work in progress, never to be left as written-in-stone. It can always be critiqued and improved. I invite anyone into this dialogue to improve learning about thinking itself and all the diverse ways of thinking that we all ought to have free access to. A first example of an Integral Thinking Curriculum is illustrated to begin the Global Thinking Agenda. You might think of this manifesto as a “calling” to gather together as humanity to a universal goal of equity and equality of opportunity for people to think about thinking as the foundation for all else that follows—the latter, which we might call “education.”

Simple Version of the Problem (Challenge)

Since my early 20s, especially from my studies in ecology and environmental biology, I had to find the answer to a question that haunted me (and still does): Why are we the only species that spoils (pollutes) its own nest? We seem self-violating and abusive unable to self-regulate in healthy ways. This is an insidious violence against Life itself. Back in the early 1970s, when this question came to me, hardly anyone I knew cared about this problem. Why?

Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same

thinking we used when we created them.”

Carl Jung:

If that definition of “the problem” is still too abstract, then maybe I can simply put our species’ problem in a nutshell: We have major problems, especially today, with how human societies deal with conflict due to differences (diversity) in their relationships. How can we design Education, in the largest sense, to improve this situation? As you’ll soon see, it is not merely going to be some program on “conflict resolution” that is brought into the world, or “peace education” or “non-violent communication” etc., that is going to really solve the problem(s). These latter forms may help but typically they only deal with surfaces of the problem and not the roots—that is, the way we think (or mostly don’t think) about thinking itself.

Transformation is possible because it is already so well under way.... this new [human] species will evolve. –G. B. Leonard[4]

Complex Version of the Problem (Challenge)

This complex version, like all complex problems, is going to require more patience to describe and unfold. It will become clearer as you read on.

Background Context: How To Read This Manifesto

I recommend you remember that there have been many manifestos[5] written or orally proclaimed by diverse peoples for a long time on planet earth. These are typically, in simple terms, an attempt to document and make claims for some new future way of thinking about something that someone thinks is important for the society, and humanity as a whole. In that sense, they are general documents, passionate speeches—often, they may appear abstract or philosophical, sometimes very political. Manifestos are intended for systematic deep reading and study, not superficial reading or entertainment—and, not merely are they meant for reading in isolation. They are best when taken up with others of good faith to learn. Then they can be discussed, debated, critiqued, and even meditated upon.

Often they raise more questions than provide concrete answers to everyday problems. I see manifestos as ‘thinking tools’ but I go one step further, as my aim here is to create a manifesto that thinks about thinking itself and critically examines the very thinking tools others have given us. We may need new thinking tools and they may look quite different, even strange, compared to the ones we were given when we were born, raised and educated in biased ways by certain forms of thinking that unfairly dominated the field of thinking itself.

It is common in modern criticism to challenge religious thinking that determined a good deal of human history, and common in postmodern criticism to challenge scientific-rational thinking that has determined a good deal of our latter part of history, at least in the Western world. This manifesto offers a criticism and challenge to both religious and scientific thinking. But so what?, you may ask.

What good action comes from manifestos? Well, it all depends. Some manifestos likely bring little about in terms of external good results. However, that alone is not criteria for saying they are a waste of time. Of course, they are only words. They contain important (usually imaginative and radical) ideas that most of us do not think about on a daily basis. And ideas are core building blocks, if interpreted well and used with good will and clarity, for guiding actions and creating a better world. Cultural growth, change, and development/evolution would not have happened without ideas that come from ‘thinking outside the box’ of convention. Which is not to say manifestos of ideas are merely utopian. Often they are very practical blueprints for societies to transform and they are bluntly truthful about the shadow-side of human activity. Sometimes they are not hopeful at all. They are, however, always controversial. How should they be read?—with an open, imaginative mind, and also critical inquiry.

It is not assumed by me or historians that manifestos are all of great and wonderful ideas either. Many of them are, yet, only history will be the ultimate judge of their success. They ought to be more than merely opinion or encouraging change for change sake. They ought to be ethically sound and well researched, with room for others to think with the manifesto. And yet, there is always a good deal of subjectivity, if not prophecy, in manifesto authorship. The mainstream society may see the author/leaders of manifestos as ‘crazy’ and ‘dangerous.’

They are typically “teachings” and can also become “preachings.” So, even if they may not have instant solutions, manifestos are meant to stir-up and/or ‘wake-up’ people’s thinking and their institutions created by certain kinds of thinking—all of which had their usefulness but may have grown out-of-date, rigid, static, authoritarian and mean-hearted, excluding and elitist, even a little sleepy and dangerously blind--blind to what changes are likely needed for human beings to adapt to the extraordinary changes going on, anywhere, and at any point in history.

Yet adapting is not all there is. Survival is fine but it seems human existence, if not all of Nature, has never been content for just survival alone. The universe is much too creative and elaborate, curious and exploratory in comparison to merely surviving—no, rather, it seems to prefer thriving, and even beyond that—all of which I will bring forth in this manifesto. It appears that the universe is conscious and filled with delight in its own accomplishments. It has eventually grown nervous system structures capable of “thinking” and eventually evolved beyond that growing capacities for “thinking about thinking” and yes, even for “thinking about thinking about thinking”—complexities of consciousness, without end. At some point, “integral thinking” emerged in this evolution of thought processes. That’s where I want to pick-up the story for the purposes of this manifesto, not the least, which is to help solve the problem and challenges I put forward on the opening pages.

The front cover photo of the Earth, as taken from a spaceship in the 1960s, has left humankind with a new and unforgettable image of “unity” on one planet—Spaceship Earth—a Global Village, with all its beauty and vulnerability. For many, this iconic image reminds us that if we do not take care of its total ecological and cultural well-being, Life (e.g., quality of life) will suffer and potentially be extinguished—and, that may not be too long in the future as some predict.

Yet, my manifesto, based on fearlessness,[6] is not about such predictions or spreading fear of worst-case scenarios; rather, it is about thinking globally—integrally, and doing so for the first time in evolutionary terms on a large-scale. I am certainly not the only person to have called individuals, groups and humans as a whole to this challenging new way of thinking[7]—to a new worldview, or what I prefer to call now, a new integral approach to thinking about thinking. Some call it meta-thinking, vision-logic or more technically, meta-cognition; but these names are not so important. I like to simply call it integral thinking, of which some of this manifesto is dedicated to explaining—why the term integral is so important and unique and rarely noticed or talked about. I want this all to change. I recommend how to grow this new way of thinking in all our children from the start.

We are not (mostly) integral thinkers yet. We tend to think in ways that serve ourselves, our egos, our status, and for only our nearest circles of loved ones. We must advance to think in bigger circles. There are many good reasons for that situation. We won’t all be integral thinkers either; that’s not the ultimate or realistic aim. However, I think I know how to move us to this critical human potential of an integral sensibility[8] that is sitting inside each of us (virtually) untapped.

My first premise: It is not integral thinking but rather non-integral thinking that has created our worst problems,[9] what some scientists and philosophers are today calling humanity’s “wicked problems.” And the problem with the problem of wicked problems is well stated by Watkins and Wilber. The wrote,

The wicked problems [e.g., global warming, racism, wars, failing states, economic crises, poverty, disease] we face as a

species are now so significant and so pressing that we often feel overwhelmed by them and have no faith in our individual or collective ability to address them [in time]. So we ignore them—but, of course, we will not be able to ignore them forever.[10]

Being fearful and overwhelmed is typically part of not being able to face-the-problem and/or resisting to think through the complexities of multi-dimensionality regarding our toughest world problems that affect us all. Too often people, be they secular or religious, young or old, black or white, will search for the (over-) simplified answers to complex problems. Those are often familiar habitual ways of judging others, instead of thinking harder and in new ways unfamiliar (see Jung’s quote at the beginning). Such familiar ways tend to delimit cooperating with others who don’t have the same worldview and/or don’t think the same as you. Our collective groups and institutions also may take this simplistic approach. From Watkins and Wilber’s view regarding wicked problems, the real problem with the problem comes down to this:

At this stage in our evolution, as a species there are simply not enough people who are sufficiently mature or evolved in their thinking to really appreciate this [complex, multi-dimensional] dynamic. Wicked problems are therefore fundamentally devel-

opmental [and learning] problems, and if we really want to find

a constructive way forward we need to adapt and take a quantum leap in our level of thinking.... that part of the solution to

wicked problems will involve the actual growth and development of the consciousness of the change agents themselves.[11] [as Einstein also said in the quote earlier] [italics added for emphasis]

My action: As part of the solution to a more complex and mature developmental stage, called integral thinking, I recommend to begin a Global Thinking Agenda (GTA, for short) for planet Earth in the 21st century. For example, I imagine the United Nations as being interested (e.g., UNESCO). I imagine people everywhere studying this manifesto and taking actions too.