It's all right, as far as completely pointless labelling exercises go. What a spectacular waste of time.

You think so? It's a lot of work, I grant, and perhaps the benefit doesn't correlate with the work - but again, I thought the exercise confirms a lot of the problems I had with "naive" level labeling. Without losing the benefit of the labeling. So in that sense, I was happy to read it.

Certainly IF one is going to analyze a PERSON, a MOVEMENT, or a speech, you make it pretty clear you can't resort to flippant one-dimensional characterizations.

Whole Writing may be a waste of time if you haven't the ability / patience / interest / desire to deeply examine a text's worldspace and worldviews, but I guarantee you that DOING the exercise was not a waste of MY time. The simple act of identifying the correct/best tag for each value or belief was a terrific Integral practice. Like any spiritual practice, it gets easier and faster and better with practice.

From Dallman's essay: "Perhaps most deviously, there is the inclination, fully supported by Wilber's own public statements, that people, everyday people who read Wilber's work, are somehow now equipped with the tools of psychology and can assess the psychological constellation, or "psychograph", of people around them, or even people in far off lands, or in public office, or of entire organizations or cultures."

I agree with that sentiment - have a lot of posts dedicated to naive psychographs, such as the "mean green" objectifications - still, I think this exercise by Joe is good, as it shows that it is very difficult to pigeonhole, even a speech, while also showing that the type of analysis used, can show certain "centers of gravity" in the perspective.

I agree with you on that point, it does show that it's naive to pigeonhole. But I think that's self-evident, I don't think you need to extensively notate the SOTU speech to illustrate that principle.

This seems oddly compulsive to me, if not strangely rigid. Language and meaning and communication can dance through any number of values / SD perspectives, even in the same moment; a seemingly simple comment of mine could be unpacked to reveal, say, a moderately developed moral sense but a high degree of cognitive understanding, as well as a certain dogmatism when it comes to my belief systems -- not to mention the fact that the interpretation of such a statement reveals as much (if not more) about the interpreter than it does the speaker.

I realize this might not be true for everyone, and that I might be exposing an over-confidence in my very ability to stay open to questions and interpretations, but I'd rather leave the issue of interpersonal communication in general as unfettered by someone else's system as possible so that I can better trust in myself - and the person with whom I'm interacting - to find our own common ground within the nuances. It might just be because I lack a certain facility with the SD system, but I'd find such assiduous labeling would get in the way.

Anyway. Just my 0.02. It does look pretty, though. :P

I got a laugh out of the "oddly compulsive" remark. I've got an Editor's personality type, so the idea of working through a text in a methodological fashion to identify and highlight particular details seems second nature. It's not everyone's cup of tea, though.

I would be happy to reply to the other points raised in the email, but I won't simply because the author doesn't take the time to identify herself (though I think I know exactly who it is). Odd that this thread inspired two critical (though welcome) comments and both persons chose to post their replies anonymously (not even a pseudonym). Come on, folks! Be critical, but be an adult and show your face. Is that really too much to ask in civil discussion?

My bad! Forget the point on anonymous commenter. I wrote that on the comments screen of this, when there was no indication that the poster had left her pseudonym. (And damn I'm a good guesser.) I have no probs with pseudonyms, so I eat my words. ;-)

Given that the post was NOT anonymous, I'm happy to take a moment longer to discuss her substantive points.

Siona...

You said, "I'd rather leave the issue of interpersonal communication in general as unfettered by someone else's system as possible so that I can better trust in myself - and the person with whom I'm interacting - to find our own common ground within the nuances."

I don't follow you. Are you saying that if you omit attention to developmental concerns in interpersonal communications, then you are somehow more "free" to find common ground? If so, I think that's mistaken; in fact, the opposite is more probable. I think if we ignore developmental issues in conversations, we may find superficial agreement but from entirely different sets of concerns and worldviews that are left unelucidated.

But AMEN to your point about discovering nuances in discourse. On that point, I find it very odd that you chose to reply to this particular look at the State of the Union address to make that point, because as an example of integral analysis on a specific text you are unlikely to find a more nuanced and specific critique around anywhere by anyone. Would you have been happier if I just labeled the SOU speech with "The Republican is orange, the Democrat is yellow"? Come on! Or would you be happier if I said, "Labeling any text for any reason is inherently unhelpful to discussion but it obfuscates nuances." If so, then that's fine. We won't agree on the value of labels. That's probably a type (agency/communion) difference, so far as I can tell. Oops! I just used a label to point to my best effort at understanding. Soooooorrry! Can you EVER forgive me? ;-)

PS. And point utterly taken on the absurdity of my criticism. I was laughing a bit at myself after that, too, because you're aboslutely right; it is one of the most nuanced and sensitive uses of integral I've seen, and a nice change from the dismissive, "That's Green / Orange / Blue / etc." that seems to me to frequently get in the way of even an attempt at interpersonal understanding. So thank you, truly, for your efforts. I'm definitely impressed.

Hee. You guessed it was me? I'm blushing. Congrats on your astuteness! Or am I that obvious? ;)

Sigh.

(Also, yeah. I know I'm projecting. I have a background not just in editing, but COPYediting. Compulsive? I'm probably diagnosible. ;)