Integral Methodological Pluralism

After all the reading, dreaming and navel-gazing I've undertaken in the last few years, I can safely say that no single concept has unlocked my freedom as much as Integral Methodological Pluralism.

When I was a boy, I remember a moment of exhilaration after a science class when I realised that all scientific 'truth' is merely repeatable hypothesis rather than a given absolutes. It was at a time when I was developing the first stages of my cognitive autonomy, and I was so deeply struck with the arguably premature realisation that I would never truly 'know' anything again. Ontological relativism at age 10... prodigy, huh?! ;-)

After that stunning realisation, I commenced a vigorous campaign to uncover the other spheres of my boyhood awareness (which was really probably just my semantic maps, rather than some premature claim to transpersonal awareness or witness consciousness) to which this relativity could apply. It was stunning! It turned out that nothing could be known without first setting the injunctive scope of inquiry. I felt so free, and so deeply fascinated by this suddenly mysterious place I'd been thrusted into. Epistemological relativity at age 11... Doogie Howser, is that you? ;-)

I was so very lucky to have the cognitive makings of an existential crisis while I was still comprehensively under my family's wing. [muffled coughs masking calls of "wanker!" are heard from the four corners of the earth]... OK, OK, just fucking with you. They were the makings of a postmodern thought process but certainly clumsy first cuts, and from a partially scientistic frame. It certainly wasn't a realisation that all is Always Already.

Anyhoo... I never developed a language to explain my thinking, with every clumsy attempt just digging me further and further into the kook's ditch. Not a fun place for a young tucker. It remained a secret realisation that informed me for years, until the worst happened...

... I got lured into a regressive cycle. Emotional pain around work and relationship incompatabilities left me clinging to an absolutistic worldview as refuge from the dark side of relativism - the difficulty in commanding agreement. In that dark hole, I wasn't able to resolve the mind that had so lucidly living with pluralism for years, with this seemingly foreign need for givens and ultimate truths (in the relative domain). It was nonsense classification neurosis, and with no workable map to chart this far deeper aperspectival territory.

So I read books on mindfulness, Zen, nature mysticism, western psychology and psychotherapy, philosophy, the list goes on, in a mindless search for the private secret that'd hidden itself even from me.

When I devoured Ken's work on IMP I had a thousand kenshos... and I felt forever bolstered in my selfhood. You know the thing, where someone else makes seemingly legitimate what you already know simply because it's published thought! No that ain't fair, it's stunningly argued stuff, and precisely the depth of theoria which my years of IMP practice needed to be complimented with.

There's more than one benefit: learning the historical philosophical imperative for IMP and Integral Post-Metaphysics isn't just the most powerful elucidation of the structral neccessities for the support and flowering of an aperspectival worldview... I also get to be (sorta) right!*... and that makes me feel very safely myself again.

Don't ignore IMP. It's critical stuff. I want to write more about the things I've been noticing from my IMP readings. Get on my case if I don't do it soon.

L.


* within the Always Already quadratic paradigmatic limits of IMP, of course ;-p