Thanks Jonathan. An educational summary of the IDGs for someone who doesn’t know that much about them. Though my fundamental sense/prejudice remains, which is implicit in the Judge’s charge sheet though not quite one of them, and might be called, to give it some rhetorical punch, the narcissistic fallacy: the conviction that human beings, through their own efforts, can co-constructively “emerge” themselves, inwardly and outwardly, towards a better tomorrow.
To my mind, what this overlooks are fundamentals of our existence, such as that we didn’t make ourselves and don’t own our intelligence, consciousness or even self-consciousness. They are an active sharing in a wider being, which most humans, for most of history and still nowadays, have approached through activities striking absent from the IDGs (unless I’ve missed something), such as worship, devotion, prayer, divination, sacrifice, offerings, faith, love.
You do reference love in passing, and I think that it might be key. The spiritual traditions teach that love can reach over reason’s horizons and break us free of self-imprisonment - indeed, is core to our transhumanising, as Dante who first coined the word, put it - because love longs for, and so draws attention towards, the more, whilst also making us receptive to and readier for it.
Moreover, it is a prerequisite for a rebalancing of the self, personal and collective, away from all the modern obsessions around self-awareness, self-development, self-transcendence, etc, that might then become more open to this spiritual commons or higher power, which exceeds us and gives itself for us, and all things. (I did wonder whether a sudden realisation of the overwhelming burden imposed by a belief in self-salvation was the cause of the IDGs weeping in your piece.)
Incidentally, I was reading the other day that the word “contemplation” originally referred to the building of cities with the temple at the centre, con-templum, much as “consideration” was originally engaging with the divine stars, con-sideris. That both these words have become wholly inner struck me as significant, part of the closed-system cosmology that is assumed as default by the modern educated mind.
Funnily enough, I’m participating in a week on love whilst you’re at the summit. The word “love” comes with all sorts of problems of its own, of course, from sentimentality to Utopianism. But your piece is helping me sharpen what I hope to take to our week, to see whether we can rise to the challenge. Hence my writing this response.
As the experience of falling in love reveals, love has us, rather than we having it. That shift of perspective must be key, I think - as has been noted at least since Plato.
Thanks Mark. Much appreciated. I'll repost your message in the hope that others see it. Just FYI I am not at the summit next week, but I know many of the people who will be. Given the choice, I would probably choose the event on love.
You are right about the tears.
I am not sure what you assumed in reading the piece, but many seem to have read it as a kind of endorsement of the IDGs. It's not that, but it is an attempt to clarify what I think they are trying to do, why that matters, and what they're not trying to do. It's also a way of questioning whether that attempt is wise. I don't state my own position, but it's probably closer to yours than you think.
In my case, however, I am working in an ecosystem that is obliged or feels obliged to make the kinds of efforts that you call the narcissistic fallacy. I wonder if you are sufficiently empathetic towards that sense of obligation. The open question of the IDGs, which is a broader question too, is how to bring people to the realisation, as Rowan Williams put it, and you allude to, that we are not our own origin. On the road to that realisation, not everyone has the luxury of being a former Priest, a Philosopher and a Psychotherapist: a martial artist of the inner world.
Even if a person has some deeper sense of telos or calling, it can be difficult to follow when you are, for instance, working in the accounts or marketing department of a large corporation, or head of campaigns for an NGO. The IDGs are more for people like that, than people with your experience, disposition and acumen. What is not clear is whether approaches like the IDG represent a small step in the right direction - a step away from profit and status seeking towards reflection and intrinsic value, or whether that is just a kind of trick to feel momentarily different while the chains of convention are tightened. I am genuinely not sure, which is why I wrote the piece - to 'lead from confusion', which seems to be my cross to bear.
Thanks again and points well made. To which I could add that religion, which is implicated in much of what I said, has a poor reputation in many parts of the world, for good reason. Perhaps, too, significant that you mention bearing a cross: love and crisis/suffering go hand in hand.
Thanks Mark - your comment on IDGs vs worship etc was helpful in clarifying some of my ick about them.
It made me think of those very clean, bright pubs that despite serving beer etc seem to be designed for people who don’t like pubs.
There are many good reasons for not liking the types of worship etc on offer, but I guess I’m carrying a hope that the answer is not to design the ‘clean and bright’ version.
There is value in the musty carpet and wonky tables of a pub, that is lost in the pubs-for-people-who-don’t-like-pubs.
And I am certain (without being able to name or justify it) that there is something lost in the neat and tidy PowerPoint-flavoured systems I see in the IDGs.
But if they can be a safe entry for those who otherwise wouldn’t go near these questions without squeamishness, I’m all for them
There is something about the institutionalisation of ideals that is inherently corruptive. It’s beyond the intentionality and/or context of what is being proposed. And it seems to go worse the more it is scaled up.
Thank you, this is exactly what I needed to read about the IDGs. I had absolutely seen them as the past pretending to be the future and so had been mildly bewildered by good folk being enthusiastic about them, and unsure what to make of it all. And it sounds like that’s as good a judgment as any other :)
Thank you Jonathan for this timely piece, which prompts me to step up for 'jury service', and engage in sequestered deliberations from somewhat of a pedagogical perspective, while suggesting a 'structural' criteria for adjudication of the IDG framework.
I have just yesterday afternoon finished delivering the first block of lectures of a new IDG module in our university (SETU-Ireland) at a Masters level. And while much of the critique offered above and below was very present with me, as I designed the thing, the experience of eliciting in a post graduate environment, the potential depths within the framework, with admittedly very motivated students, was personally very edifying and by all accounts shared.
In brief we first grounded our proposed work in contemplative practice, before covering the science and the 'exterior', as depicted by the SDGs, plus the net takeaways from the recent 2023 IPCC report, while engaging clips from the Breaking Boundaries model, to get a shared sense of 'our time', and metabolising that it's "90 seconds to Midnight".
For many, of us, and/or parts of us, still in 'pre-tragic' awareness, ('denial'-as a quite understandable defense mechanism, while not blind to its commissive nature) this can be quite a disorienting dilemma, (hence the value of the initial collective grounding-holding practice) as we continued to orientate and explore the integrative dynamic of exterior and interior, through the notion of the 'meta-crisis', as at least, also intimating a 'cognitive', 'sense', 'meaning', 'value', 'timing', 'attention' and 'field' crisis.
With no desire to mechanically rush through the dimensions/skills, it becomes apparent that double clicking on any of them, in attunement with a living classroom, can induce embodied holographic conversations. 'Critical thinking' skills were turned on the SDGs themselves, particularly goal 8-'economic growth', introducing the evidence from the updated 50 year Club of Rome/Limits to growth/Earth for All model. There was something very alive and heartening in deeply 'appreciating' and 'listening' to clips from our predecessors, Donella Meadows and the likes of Gregory Bateson, as 'complex awareness' came into view. While A-bott Mcgilchrist (forgive me) graced us with his knowledge and 'wisdom' as 'inner compass' inquiry questions around the nature of 'Value' arose, a potential catalytic insight for students, when this penetrates, in my view.
I could go on or perhaps further in, to relay what I feel is the potential here of utilizing this 'communication strategy' for deliberately developmental conversations of significance (depth), with a wider broader audience. While in short, the dynamic of the course flowed to authentically facing the 'tragic' nature of 'our time', and to presencing something of a 'post tragic' awareness, which in very short, re'cognises figure and Ground and tastes the reality of 'Love'- (I- thou)-in the 'Relating' dimension.
And so my immediate suggested 'structural' criteria of evaluation of the IDGs, draws on Fischer's 'structure as form' fallacy, which as you will recall, arises when we expect conformity of reality to an ideal form, as when an abstraction used to describe reality is confounded with the reality described.
At a chemical level, the structure of an apple is dynamic, developing from seed, sustaining a dynamic equilibrium before decaying. The concept of ‘a sphere’ is an abstract form, an ideal form we usefully apply as one trait of the structure, its shape, across myriad instances of spherical objects.
And so with this distinction in mind, I want to suggest, let us adjudicate 'the IDGS' by their fruits.
And to harvest these in their sustaining dynamic equilibrium phase, as requisite skills and practices for further broader and deeper collective collaborative momentum, in this betwixt time.
Hi Padraic, did I ever reply to this comment? Thanks for the care you took in writing it. Interesting to see how you’ve managed your own interest/ambivalence. I just reposted a version of this over on Perspectiva’s substack
hello! I note the marked difference between the language of Jonathan and Vernon (playful) and the serious well intentioned scribing of Pádraic Hurley. Not sure it is hell that good intentions pave the way to but to a more-of-the-same.
Thanks Chris for your observation. And guilty as charged ! I admit a Bhaskarian 'seriousness' pervades my scribbling given the hour (and the thread topic-medium-while my sense is Jonathan and Vernon may also be more 'serious' than a/scribed?) While within an embodied living classroom set & setting, exploring 'inner development' as a way marker and collective practice space so to speak, between the context of the metacrisis & what I sense as a meta-opportunity, a different feel'd emerged. Holding the framework lightly and allowing it to scaffold until no longer needed and/or 'it' is enriched and embodied, I/we found useful pedagogically within a university context where STEM often steAms ahead. Hence the share. Are these skills /practices and their potential generative shifts in perspective/action not 'a matter of life and death' ? Are they not implicit in your own work ? And can we ever really have a "more-of-the-same" ? Or are we perhaps missing, not seeing, sensing, 'thinking', feeling the Meta-Opportunity, the sheer grandeur and developmental diversity of the (moving) thing and our overlapping and potentially collaborative approaches to-through 'it-id' ? (Serious face emoji)
Padraic - spect for your work yes. Perhaps both (play and serious) together? Subtitle of recent book on climate crisis was "A matter of Life and Death' but most apposite book title by Watzlawick was 'The Situation is hopeless but not serious'
Appreciate that Chris while in short 'serious' in a Bhaskarian sense means the unity of theory and practice. The lairs & layers of a 'word' ! And of course the action oriented implications of recognising a 'depth ontology' which Watzlawick by all accounts eschews ?
Indeed it is this 'un-seriousness' that Bhaskar underscores as 'seriously' problematic in the discourse of modernities, because not least their implications for 'practice', 'action' and i might mention 'active hope', which all feels to me more aligned & attuned to whats ours to do and how to do it, in this moment ?
Thank you Jonathan for this timely piece, which prompts me to step up for 'jury service', and engage in sequestered deliberations from somewhat of a pedagogical perspective, while suggesting a 'structural' criteria for adjudication of the IDG framework.
I have just yesterday afternoon finished delivering the first block of lectures of a new IDG module in our university (SETU-Ireland) at a Masters level. And while much of the critique offered above and below was very present with me, as I designed the thing, the experience of eliciting in a post graduate environment, the potential depths within the framework, with admittedly very motivated students, was personally very edifying and by all accounts shared.
In brief we first grounded our proposed work in contemplative practice, before covering the science and the 'exterior', as depicted by the SDGs, plus the net takeaways from the recent 2023 IPCC report, while engaging clips from the Breaking Boundaries model, to get a shared sense of 'our time', and metabolising that it's "90 seconds to Midnight".
For many, of us, and/or parts of us, still in 'pre-tragic' awareness, ('denial'-as a quite understandable defense mechanism, while not blind to its commissive nature) this can be quite a disorienting dilemma, (hence the value of the initial collective grounding-holding practice) as we continued to orientate and explore the integrative dynamic of exterior and interior, through the notion of the 'meta-crisis', as at least, also intimating a 'cognitive', 'sense', 'meaning', 'value', 'timing', 'attention' and 'field' crisis.
With no desire to mechanically rush through the dimensions/skills, it becomes apparent that double clicking on any of them, in attunement with a living classroom, can induce embodied holographic conversations. 'Critical thinking' skills were turned on the SDGs themselves, particularly goal 8-'economic growth', introducing the evidence from the updated 50 year Club of Rome/Limits to growth/Earth for All model. There was something very alive and heartening in deeply 'appreciating' and 'listening' to clips from our predecessors, Donella Meadows and the likes of Gregory Bateson, as 'complex awareness' came into view. While A-bott Mcgilchrist (forgive me) graced us with his knowledge and 'wisdom' as 'inner compass' inquiry questions around the nature of 'Value' arose, a potential catalytic insight for students, when this penetrates, in my view.
I could go on or perhaps further in, to relay what I feel is the potential here of utilizing this 'communication strategy' for deliberately developmental conversations of significance (depth), with a wider broader audience. While in short, the dynamic of the course flowed to authentically facing the 'tragic' nature of 'our time', and to presencing something of a 'post tragic' awareness, which in very short, re'cognises figure and Ground and tastes the reality of 'Love'- (I- thou)-in the 'Relating' dimension.
And so my immediate suggested 'structural' criteria of evaluation of the IDGs, draws on Fischer's 'structure as form' fallacy, which as you will recall, arises when we expect conformity of reality to an ideal form, as when an abstraction used to describe reality is confounded with the reality described.
At a chemical level, the structure of an apple is dynamic, developing from seed, sustaining a dynamic equilibrium before decaying. The concept of ‘a sphere’ is an abstract form, an ideal form we usefully apply as one trait of the structure, its shape, across myriad instances of spherical objects.
And so with this distinction in mind, I want to suggest, let us adjudicate 'the IDGS' by their fruits.
And to harvest these in their sustaining dynamic equilibrium phase, as requisite skills and practices for further broader and deeper collective collaborative momentum, in this betwixt time.
Hi. I’m not there actually. Family commitments at home makes travelling difficult. If you are there, I’m curious to know what lies behind your question. J+
Thanks Jonathon - I recently turned 75 and am in the process of returning from whence I came (the IDG Being stage). Intellectually I find myself at this Manuel (Fawlty Towers) and Aristotle "I know nothing" stage of life, and, my physical capacities to “do” are fading. I now approach ‘schemes’ (like your IDGs) from the ‘unknowing’ I have been developing since I have been a meditator in the John Main (WCCM) tradition (30 min twice daily) for about 20 years. It is this 'right brained' (see Iain Mc Gilchrist) knowing (= experience) of reality that this gives that has made me both less and more confident in your IDGs.
More confident because they begin in the only place that I can begin - with “me”, only to discover the transient and illusory nature of the self. A kenotic ‘self emptying’ of all that I am is essential for the ‘self awareness’ of which you speak. This is, in my experience, never ‘self’ but always pure openness - attention (least of all attention to the 'self') but attention to the presence of the flow of Being in all things, which includes, but is not centred on “me” or my “existence” or “consciousness” (see IMcG). This knowledge, necessarily entails the absence of any thought. It is attention which “consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object” (Weil). For me, this attention to what is, is at the basis of any inner development.
Less confident because, your IDGs are expressed, in the only way that they can be expressed, in “left” hemisphere terms and these are linear. But life and reality are not linear, they are spiral (IMG). The implementation of any ‘development’ goals seems to me to be inherently linear - step 1 followed by step 2 …. Etc. In my life I am always at step 1 and I never progress. Why? Because progression implies that I have ‘captured and controlled’ one stage and ready to move onto the next. This is dreaming! I am either very lazy in my old age or I am discovering that unless we return to ‘being’ at every moment through all stages of our inner journey our thinking, relating, collaborating and acting will always remain relevant in ‘memory’ but irrelevant and unimplementable to meet the needs of the emerging present moment of being.
Thanks Jonathan. IDG claims to be “Based on scientific research” and to have “major connections with research centres at Harvard and MIT” . Do you by any chance have any links to peer reviewed research from an acclaimed scientist about IDG?
I does seam to me that IDG is outside of Universities, but using word as "research" - when in fact it is brochures for IDG.
Have you seen any one who has written a critique of IDG? Perhaps challaged them as anything but consultants making a living of the latest fad?
Thanks for any suggestion for further reading, and thanks for your article.
Oh, I enjoyed reading your piece and just wondered if you went to the Summit. I checked out some of it and enjoyed the way some of the speakers kind of looked at the IDGs and then asked bigger questions that also offered a critique of them in a more subtler way...
Thanks Jonathan. An educational summary of the IDGs for someone who doesn’t know that much about them. Though my fundamental sense/prejudice remains, which is implicit in the Judge’s charge sheet though not quite one of them, and might be called, to give it some rhetorical punch, the narcissistic fallacy: the conviction that human beings, through their own efforts, can co-constructively “emerge” themselves, inwardly and outwardly, towards a better tomorrow.
To my mind, what this overlooks are fundamentals of our existence, such as that we didn’t make ourselves and don’t own our intelligence, consciousness or even self-consciousness. They are an active sharing in a wider being, which most humans, for most of history and still nowadays, have approached through activities striking absent from the IDGs (unless I’ve missed something), such as worship, devotion, prayer, divination, sacrifice, offerings, faith, love.
You do reference love in passing, and I think that it might be key. The spiritual traditions teach that love can reach over reason’s horizons and break us free of self-imprisonment - indeed, is core to our transhumanising, as Dante who first coined the word, put it - because love longs for, and so draws attention towards, the more, whilst also making us receptive to and readier for it.
Moreover, it is a prerequisite for a rebalancing of the self, personal and collective, away from all the modern obsessions around self-awareness, self-development, self-transcendence, etc, that might then become more open to this spiritual commons or higher power, which exceeds us and gives itself for us, and all things. (I did wonder whether a sudden realisation of the overwhelming burden imposed by a belief in self-salvation was the cause of the IDGs weeping in your piece.)
Incidentally, I was reading the other day that the word “contemplation” originally referred to the building of cities with the temple at the centre, con-templum, much as “consideration” was originally engaging with the divine stars, con-sideris. That both these words have become wholly inner struck me as significant, part of the closed-system cosmology that is assumed as default by the modern educated mind.
Funnily enough, I’m participating in a week on love whilst you’re at the summit. The word “love” comes with all sorts of problems of its own, of course, from sentimentality to Utopianism. But your piece is helping me sharpen what I hope to take to our week, to see whether we can rise to the challenge. Hence my writing this response.
As the experience of falling in love reveals, love has us, rather than we having it. That shift of perspective must be key, I think - as has been noted at least since Plato.
Thanks Mark. Much appreciated. I'll repost your message in the hope that others see it. Just FYI I am not at the summit next week, but I know many of the people who will be. Given the choice, I would probably choose the event on love.
You are right about the tears.
I am not sure what you assumed in reading the piece, but many seem to have read it as a kind of endorsement of the IDGs. It's not that, but it is an attempt to clarify what I think they are trying to do, why that matters, and what they're not trying to do. It's also a way of questioning whether that attempt is wise. I don't state my own position, but it's probably closer to yours than you think.
In my case, however, I am working in an ecosystem that is obliged or feels obliged to make the kinds of efforts that you call the narcissistic fallacy. I wonder if you are sufficiently empathetic towards that sense of obligation. The open question of the IDGs, which is a broader question too, is how to bring people to the realisation, as Rowan Williams put it, and you allude to, that we are not our own origin. On the road to that realisation, not everyone has the luxury of being a former Priest, a Philosopher and a Psychotherapist: a martial artist of the inner world.
Even if a person has some deeper sense of telos or calling, it can be difficult to follow when you are, for instance, working in the accounts or marketing department of a large corporation, or head of campaigns for an NGO. The IDGs are more for people like that, than people with your experience, disposition and acumen. What is not clear is whether approaches like the IDG represent a small step in the right direction - a step away from profit and status seeking towards reflection and intrinsic value, or whether that is just a kind of trick to feel momentarily different while the chains of convention are tightened. I am genuinely not sure, which is why I wrote the piece - to 'lead from confusion', which seems to be my cross to bear.
Thanks again and points well made. To which I could add that religion, which is implicated in much of what I said, has a poor reputation in many parts of the world, for good reason. Perhaps, too, significant that you mention bearing a cross: love and crisis/suffering go hand in hand.
Thanks Mark - your comment on IDGs vs worship etc was helpful in clarifying some of my ick about them.
It made me think of those very clean, bright pubs that despite serving beer etc seem to be designed for people who don’t like pubs.
There are many good reasons for not liking the types of worship etc on offer, but I guess I’m carrying a hope that the answer is not to design the ‘clean and bright’ version.
There is value in the musty carpet and wonky tables of a pub, that is lost in the pubs-for-people-who-don’t-like-pubs.
And I am certain (without being able to name or justify it) that there is something lost in the neat and tidy PowerPoint-flavoured systems I see in the IDGs.
But if they can be a safe entry for those who otherwise wouldn’t go near these questions without squeamishness, I’m all for them
Maybe echoes of substituting tidy maps for untidy territory in what you say...
There is something about the institutionalisation of ideals that is inherently corruptive. It’s beyond the intentionality and/or context of what is being proposed. And it seems to go worse the more it is scaled up.
Thank you, this is exactly what I needed to read about the IDGs. I had absolutely seen them as the past pretending to be the future and so had been mildly bewildered by good folk being enthusiastic about them, and unsure what to make of it all. And it sounds like that’s as good a judgment as any other :)
Thank you Jonathan for this timely piece, which prompts me to step up for 'jury service', and engage in sequestered deliberations from somewhat of a pedagogical perspective, while suggesting a 'structural' criteria for adjudication of the IDG framework.
I have just yesterday afternoon finished delivering the first block of lectures of a new IDG module in our university (SETU-Ireland) at a Masters level. And while much of the critique offered above and below was very present with me, as I designed the thing, the experience of eliciting in a post graduate environment, the potential depths within the framework, with admittedly very motivated students, was personally very edifying and by all accounts shared.
In brief we first grounded our proposed work in contemplative practice, before covering the science and the 'exterior', as depicted by the SDGs, plus the net takeaways from the recent 2023 IPCC report, while engaging clips from the Breaking Boundaries model, to get a shared sense of 'our time', and metabolising that it's "90 seconds to Midnight".
For many, of us, and/or parts of us, still in 'pre-tragic' awareness, ('denial'-as a quite understandable defense mechanism, while not blind to its commissive nature) this can be quite a disorienting dilemma, (hence the value of the initial collective grounding-holding practice) as we continued to orientate and explore the integrative dynamic of exterior and interior, through the notion of the 'meta-crisis', as at least, also intimating a 'cognitive', 'sense', 'meaning', 'value', 'timing', 'attention' and 'field' crisis.
With no desire to mechanically rush through the dimensions/skills, it becomes apparent that double clicking on any of them, in attunement with a living classroom, can induce embodied holographic conversations. 'Critical thinking' skills were turned on the SDGs themselves, particularly goal 8-'economic growth', introducing the evidence from the updated 50 year Club of Rome/Limits to growth/Earth for All model. There was something very alive and heartening in deeply 'appreciating' and 'listening' to clips from our predecessors, Donella Meadows and the likes of Gregory Bateson, as 'complex awareness' came into view. While A-bott Mcgilchrist (forgive me) graced us with his knowledge and 'wisdom' as 'inner compass' inquiry questions around the nature of 'Value' arose, a potential catalytic insight for students, when this penetrates, in my view.
I could go on or perhaps further in, to relay what I feel is the potential here of utilizing this 'communication strategy' for deliberately developmental conversations of significance (depth), with a wider broader audience. While in short, the dynamic of the course flowed to authentically facing the 'tragic' nature of 'our time', and to presencing something of a 'post tragic' awareness, which in very short, re'cognises figure and Ground and tastes the reality of 'Love'- (I- thou)-in the 'Relating' dimension.
And so my immediate suggested 'structural' criteria of evaluation of the IDGs, draws on Fischer's 'structure as form' fallacy, which as you will recall, arises when we expect conformity of reality to an ideal form, as when an abstraction used to describe reality is confounded with the reality described.
At a chemical level, the structure of an apple is dynamic, developing from seed, sustaining a dynamic equilibrium before decaying. The concept of ‘a sphere’ is an abstract form, an ideal form we usefully apply as one trait of the structure, its shape, across myriad instances of spherical objects.
And so with this distinction in mind, I want to suggest, let us adjudicate 'the IDGS' by their fruits.
And to harvest these in their sustaining dynamic equilibrium phase, as requisite skills and practices for further broader and deeper collective collaborative momentum, in this betwixt time.
Hi Padraic, did I ever reply to this comment? Thanks for the care you took in writing it. Interesting to see how you’ve managed your own interest/ambivalence. I just reposted a version of this over on Perspectiva’s substack
hello! I note the marked difference between the language of Jonathan and Vernon (playful) and the serious well intentioned scribing of Pádraic Hurley. Not sure it is hell that good intentions pave the way to but to a more-of-the-same.
Thanks Chris for your observation. And guilty as charged ! I admit a Bhaskarian 'seriousness' pervades my scribbling given the hour (and the thread topic-medium-while my sense is Jonathan and Vernon may also be more 'serious' than a/scribed?) While within an embodied living classroom set & setting, exploring 'inner development' as a way marker and collective practice space so to speak, between the context of the metacrisis & what I sense as a meta-opportunity, a different feel'd emerged. Holding the framework lightly and allowing it to scaffold until no longer needed and/or 'it' is enriched and embodied, I/we found useful pedagogically within a university context where STEM often steAms ahead. Hence the share. Are these skills /practices and their potential generative shifts in perspective/action not 'a matter of life and death' ? Are they not implicit in your own work ? And can we ever really have a "more-of-the-same" ? Or are we perhaps missing, not seeing, sensing, 'thinking', feeling the Meta-Opportunity, the sheer grandeur and developmental diversity of the (moving) thing and our overlapping and potentially collaborative approaches to-through 'it-id' ? (Serious face emoji)
Padraic - spect for your work yes. Perhaps both (play and serious) together? Subtitle of recent book on climate crisis was "A matter of Life and Death' but most apposite book title by Watzlawick was 'The Situation is hopeless but not serious'
Appreciate that Chris while in short 'serious' in a Bhaskarian sense means the unity of theory and practice. The lairs & layers of a 'word' ! And of course the action oriented implications of recognising a 'depth ontology' which Watzlawick by all accounts eschews ?
Indeed it is this 'un-seriousness' that Bhaskar underscores as 'seriously' problematic in the discourse of modernities, because not least their implications for 'practice', 'action' and i might mention 'active hope', which all feels to me more aligned & attuned to whats ours to do and how to do it, in this moment ?
The "presence" and "humility" moment was so spot on 😂
Thank you Jonathan for this timely piece, which prompts me to step up for 'jury service', and engage in sequestered deliberations from somewhat of a pedagogical perspective, while suggesting a 'structural' criteria for adjudication of the IDG framework.
I have just yesterday afternoon finished delivering the first block of lectures of a new IDG module in our university (SETU-Ireland) at a Masters level. And while much of the critique offered above and below was very present with me, as I designed the thing, the experience of eliciting in a post graduate environment, the potential depths within the framework, with admittedly very motivated students, was personally very edifying and by all accounts shared.
In brief we first grounded our proposed work in contemplative practice, before covering the science and the 'exterior', as depicted by the SDGs, plus the net takeaways from the recent 2023 IPCC report, while engaging clips from the Breaking Boundaries model, to get a shared sense of 'our time', and metabolising that it's "90 seconds to Midnight".
For many, of us, and/or parts of us, still in 'pre-tragic' awareness, ('denial'-as a quite understandable defense mechanism, while not blind to its commissive nature) this can be quite a disorienting dilemma, (hence the value of the initial collective grounding-holding practice) as we continued to orientate and explore the integrative dynamic of exterior and interior, through the notion of the 'meta-crisis', as at least, also intimating a 'cognitive', 'sense', 'meaning', 'value', 'timing', 'attention' and 'field' crisis.
With no desire to mechanically rush through the dimensions/skills, it becomes apparent that double clicking on any of them, in attunement with a living classroom, can induce embodied holographic conversations. 'Critical thinking' skills were turned on the SDGs themselves, particularly goal 8-'economic growth', introducing the evidence from the updated 50 year Club of Rome/Limits to growth/Earth for All model. There was something very alive and heartening in deeply 'appreciating' and 'listening' to clips from our predecessors, Donella Meadows and the likes of Gregory Bateson, as 'complex awareness' came into view. While A-bott Mcgilchrist (forgive me) graced us with his knowledge and 'wisdom' as 'inner compass' inquiry questions around the nature of 'Value' arose, a potential catalytic insight for students, when this penetrates, in my view.
I could go on or perhaps further in, to relay what I feel is the potential here of utilizing this 'communication strategy' for deliberately developmental conversations of significance (depth), with a wider broader audience. While in short, the dynamic of the course flowed to authentically facing the 'tragic' nature of 'our time', and to presencing something of a 'post tragic' awareness, which in very short, re'cognises figure and Ground and tastes the reality of 'Love'- (I- thou)-in the 'Relating' dimension.
And so my immediate suggested 'structural' criteria of evaluation of the IDGs, draws on Fischer's 'structure as form' fallacy, which as you will recall, arises when we expect conformity of reality to an ideal form, as when an abstraction used to describe reality is confounded with the reality described.
At a chemical level, the structure of an apple is dynamic, developing from seed, sustaining a dynamic equilibrium before decaying. The concept of ‘a sphere’ is an abstract form, an ideal form we usefully apply as one trait of the structure, its shape, across myriad instances of spherical objects.
And so with this distinction in mind, I want to suggest, let us adjudicate 'the IDGS' by their fruits.
And to harvest these in their sustaining dynamic equilibrium phase, as requisite skills and practices for further broader and deeper collective collaborative momentum, in this betwixt time.
Curious what you think if you attended day 01 of their summit yesterday?
Hi. I’m not there actually. Family commitments at home makes travelling difficult. If you are there, I’m curious to know what lies behind your question. J+
Thanks Jonathon - I recently turned 75 and am in the process of returning from whence I came (the IDG Being stage). Intellectually I find myself at this Manuel (Fawlty Towers) and Aristotle "I know nothing" stage of life, and, my physical capacities to “do” are fading. I now approach ‘schemes’ (like your IDGs) from the ‘unknowing’ I have been developing since I have been a meditator in the John Main (WCCM) tradition (30 min twice daily) for about 20 years. It is this 'right brained' (see Iain Mc Gilchrist) knowing (= experience) of reality that this gives that has made me both less and more confident in your IDGs.
More confident because they begin in the only place that I can begin - with “me”, only to discover the transient and illusory nature of the self. A kenotic ‘self emptying’ of all that I am is essential for the ‘self awareness’ of which you speak. This is, in my experience, never ‘self’ but always pure openness - attention (least of all attention to the 'self') but attention to the presence of the flow of Being in all things, which includes, but is not centred on “me” or my “existence” or “consciousness” (see IMcG). This knowledge, necessarily entails the absence of any thought. It is attention which “consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object” (Weil). For me, this attention to what is, is at the basis of any inner development.
Less confident because, your IDGs are expressed, in the only way that they can be expressed, in “left” hemisphere terms and these are linear. But life and reality are not linear, they are spiral (IMG). The implementation of any ‘development’ goals seems to me to be inherently linear - step 1 followed by step 2 …. Etc. In my life I am always at step 1 and I never progress. Why? Because progression implies that I have ‘captured and controlled’ one stage and ready to move onto the next. This is dreaming! I am either very lazy in my old age or I am discovering that unless we return to ‘being’ at every moment through all stages of our inner journey our thinking, relating, collaborating and acting will always remain relevant in ‘memory’ but irrelevant and unimplementable to meet the needs of the emerging present moment of being.
Thanks Jonathan. IDG claims to be “Based on scientific research” and to have “major connections with research centres at Harvard and MIT” . Do you by any chance have any links to peer reviewed research from an acclaimed scientist about IDG?
I does seam to me that IDG is outside of Universities, but using word as "research" - when in fact it is brochures for IDG.
Have you seen any one who has written a critique of IDG? Perhaps challaged them as anything but consultants making a living of the latest fad?
Thanks for any suggestion for further reading, and thanks for your article.
Oh, I enjoyed reading your piece and just wondered if you went to the Summit. I checked out some of it and enjoyed the way some of the speakers kind of looked at the IDGs and then asked bigger questions that also offered a critique of them in a more subtler way...