[Oe List ...] M.Fox & Ken Wilbur on Leadership

LAURELCG at aol.com LAURELCG at aol.com
Thu Mar 3 17:34:36 EST 2005


Matthew Fox has moved to the position of president emeritous of Univ. of 
Creation Spirituality.  Jim Garrison is the new president, is auditing every nook 
and cranny of practice, and is renaming UCS as Wisdom University.  This has 
caused quite a brouhaha in the graduate ranks, since we weren't consulted about 
the change, and some hate it.  This is part of Matt's response.  (The 
reluctance to take input has been an issue from the beginning.)  Thought Wilbur fans 
would find this interesting.

 

 

 Some Thoughts on Leadership within a Creation Spirituality Context  

 

                                           by Matthew Fox

 

At this time of transition at UCS and in light of discussions about 

leadership and participation, I feel it might be useful to suggest 

some thoughts on these subjects for reflection and from a creation 

spirituality perspective.  I think an intellectual discussion of 

these matters can benefit not only us but progressive movements in 

general.

 

I have always understood true "authority" to come from the word 

itself--authorship or creativity.  Much of the sadness I have felt 

around institutions in my lifetime has been the lack of creativity 

(or true authority) therein and among leaders--or people who ought to 

be leading.

 

Probably the place where I have most offered my view of leadership is 

in the chapter on "Dancing Sara's Circle" in my book on "A 

Spirituality Named Compassion."  I make the point there that staying 

close to the earth is preferable to climbing ladders and that circles 

are better than ladders because in circles people relate eye-to-eye.  

But I also point out that even circles need leaders and that leaders 

ought to rotate--no one is 'leader for life'--and leaders and all of 

us ought to be accessible for eye-to-eye contact, for debate, 

disagreement and mutual sharing of opinions.

 

A few months ago, Dr. Ana Perez Chisti was leading a circle dance for 

the MLA students at UCS/Naropa and I was part of the dance as I have 

been of so many for the past 28 years.  It was a bit of a struggle 

getting started--learning the new steps and the new words (some of 

which were in a foreign language)--but once we got it, it was a 

wonderful and spirit-filled experience.  I was grateful to Ana for 

what she knew and for her perseverance in teaching us and for her 

bringing a newly inspired dance to our circle and our school.

 

What if she had set up a committee to "process" the dance?  All 33 

people with 33 opinions on which steps should or shouldn't go here or 

there?  What a time-consuming mess that would have been!

 

I do not gainsay Ana her right and responsibility as our leader to 

instruct us and lead us. Indeed, I thank her for it.  After the fact 

we can sit around and decide if we like the dance and if we wanted to 

learn another and just how effective it was.

 

I think this is an ample metaphor for leadership in a creation 

spirituality context.  The 32 dancers in the circle need to presume 

our leader knows what she/he is doing and give her/him our fullest 

cooperation.  Everyone has a role to play but not as leader.  You 

don't have 33 leaders; life is too short for that.  Of course there 

are different kinds of leaders: individuals have leadership roles to 

play and so do groups or teams.  And work together they must.

 

I want to offer two insights from the work of Ken Wilbur that I think 

shed considerable insight on the process we are now going through.  I 

feel that our struggle is not just "ours;" it is something all 

organizations are going through in this unusual time in history and I 

believe Wilbur's reflections can help us to understand what is going 

on and evolve in a more healthy fashion.

 

One insight concerns the word "hierarchy."  The word "hierarchy" does 

not come from "higher" but from "hieros" meaning "sacred".  There are 

nests of sacred beings and smaller and larger circles encompassing 

all beings or "holons."  Individual holons exist in "nested 

hierarchies" or holarchies of other individual holons (eg., quarks to 

atoms to molecules to cells to organisms).  Social holons transcend 

and include previous holans. As Whitehead put it, natural hiearchy is 

holarchy.  

 

(Abraham Maslow talks about the "hierarchy of needs" that individuals 

undergo from basics of food and water through "self actualization" 

itself.  All levels affect the other levels but each level is also 

distinct in itself and the seventh (self-actualization) is more 

advanced than the other six--though all are interdependent--and it 

incorporates the other six levels.)

 

This, I think, is important information for creating postmodern 

institutions and leadership in them.  UCS is not a place of anarchy.  

Nor is it a Vatican style vertical hierarchy.  But it does have 

people working at different levels of influence and responsibilities 

to contribute to the success of the whole.  Circles within circles 

one might say.

 

A ship may have 500 workers on it, each doing their necessary job in 

contributing to the whole.  But it does not have 500 captains.  Or 

even ten or five or two.  It has one captain who, for better or for 

worse, has the ultimate decision-making powers to be taken abut the 

ship's direction with in-put and counsel from other experienced co-

workers and even outside experts.  A University has a president (or 

CEO); a COO or CFO who oversees administration and finance; and a CAO 

(academic officer) as a minimum.  And the board oversees the 

president who ultimately is responsible legally and ethically for the 

direction of the institution.

 

A second lesson worth discussing from Ken Wilbur's work seems most 

appropriate for UCS students, faculty and employees.  This concerns 

the passage from "green meme" to the next level of development 

(called "second tier").  Many people drawn to UCS come from the green 

meme generation or mind-set.  Ken believes that in the 60's and 70's 

a "genuine revolution" happened because for the first time in history 

a significant portion of the population moved from orange to green.  

 

Ken describes the green meme in the following manner: The green memes 

are those "cultural creatives" in all their diversity.  Positively, 

they brought on much of the civil rights movement, feminism, 

environmental protection and health care freedom.  

 

But the shadow side is that they tend to deconstruct rather than 

reconstruct (killing something is much swifter than building it and 

this is why ugly speech and gossip is so destructive); they set up 

politically correct thought police; they dumb down education by 

eliminating all grades and ranking; they are so overly sensitive to 

not hurting someone's feelings that they squelch free speech; and 

finally "Green has to have victims" and thus everybody is either an 

innocent victim or a wicked oppressive force.  A kind of "victim 

chic" erodes self responsibility, demonizes much of life's messiness 

and trivializes the real victims of real oppression, says Wilbur.  

They hate 'hierarchy' so thoroughly that they also ignore holarchy or 

any effort whatsoever in creating rankings or what I would 

call "priorities."

 

Wilbur describes a meeting run on green principles runs like this: 

everyone is allowed to express their feelings, which often takes 

hours; there is an interminable processing of opinions, often 

reaching no decision or course of action because to choose might 

exclude somebody.  Even though in reality not all views are of equal 

merit yet the meeting is considered a success not if a conclusion is 

reached but if everybody has a chance to share their feelings.

 

The healthy green is the 'sensitive self' that develops 

multiculturalism, diversity movements, pluralism and more.  As 

advanced as the green meme movements have been, Wilbur sees them as 

contributing to preventing an integral culture or the next level of 

consciousness that needs to be born. 

 

Unhealthy green takes things to extremes with a kind of "green 

Inquisition that is now quite active in academia, both conventional 

and even more so in alternative education."  The next step or "second 

tier" needs to be a both/and consciousness but greens are not good at 

that.  The reason why is that "green is not yet really integral or 

really inclusive because it does not yet grasp holarchy and so it 

cannot really create greater wholeness--all it can do is collect the 

parts, to connect the parts into greater wholes which requires 

ranking--worldcentric is better than ethnocentic is better than ego-

centric--but green just can't bring itself to consciously rank 

anything, including worldviews, so it gathers everybody together and 

then watches helplessly as those fragments proceed to tear each other 

apart." 

 

Are we at UCS in danger of "tearing each other apart?"  I suppose 

wherever humans gather that is a distinct possibility.  I recall my 

last conversation with our beloved faculty member M.C. Richards 

before she died and she told me how she saw UCS as the reincarnation 

of the Black Mountain educational experiment--but how she prayed that 

we would "last longer" and not "tear ourselves apart."

 

Regarding hierarchies, Wilbur feels that "green denies holarchies 

altogether--denies nested hierarchies and ranking of any sort.  But 

the one way atoms can be brought together into molecules is via 

hierarchy.  That is, there has to be some principle that is higher or 

deeper than the isolated part in order to bring them together.  

That 'deeper' or 'higher' glue is nested hierarchy (holarchy), and 

without holarchy, you have heaps, not wholes."  

 

I believe that important principles of creation spirituality such as 

the Four Paths; deep ecumenism; the sacredness of creation or 

cosmology; art as the prime language for mystical experience and 

prophetic action have indeed kept us together at UCS for 28 years.  

Perhaps another word for Holarchy is: Priorities.  These are our 

priorities and by returning to them we ground ourselves in our common 

commitment.

 

Wilbur asks: Why is orange more advanced than blue, etc?  "Because 

each higher wave of development is more inclusive and more holistic---

moving from egocentric (purple, red) to ethnoentric (blue) to 

worldcentric (orange, green and second tier) and second tier opens 

directly onto pneumocentric or Kosmocentric.  Each higher wave has 

more consciousness, more care, and more compassion."  (Clearly, 

creation spirituality and wisdom are about pneumocentric and 

kosmocentric awareness and action.)  Yes, Meister Eckhart IS a more 

solid mentor than, say, Augustine.  He is more kosmocentric among 

other things.

 

Wilbur believes that the greens are poised to enter the new stage 

of "second tier" provided they can "move on." The next stage will 

produce "integral medicine, integral education, politics, business, 

spirituality, ecology, art."  He believes many young people are 

already there.  

 

To me, this is where Wisdom University (and, yes, creation 

spirituality) is well situated to provide a context and even a vessel 

to promote this integration.  

 

But for UCS and Wisdom University to fulfill its mission and promise 

we cannot be stuck in green notions of disempowering leadership or of 

ignorance of holarchy or of eternal processing of every proposal or 

of wounded ego's or victimization trumping shared visions. 

 

>From the start, UCS (and ICCS for 20 years previous) has declared its 

mission to be to train mystics and prophets.  Prophets are not self-

serving and do not wilt or attack others because their ego's are 

bruised.  They look at the bigger picture and pitch in.  As did our 

recent graduate and martyr, Dorothy Stang, in the Amazon.  They grow 

a thicker skin.  Which is what spiritual practice including arts of 

meditation should be helping us with.  Our pedagogy needs to 

accomplish this, for the world needs strong souls today.

 

Especially with a new president coming on board and with our moving 

out of start-up to a new level of influence, I urge all members of 

the extended UCS/Wisdom University community to support the future 

and our new president by joining the new teams that are being 

established to draw on group wisdom and to join the visioning 

exercises being developed to move us into a more sustainable 

existence.  Hopefully this way we will become an ever more effective 

vessel for helping our culture accomplish the same. 

 

Thank you for reflecting on these matters with me.

 

(You can read more of Wilbur's thoughts by going to his 3 part 

interview with Shambala magazine on his Web page.)



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