The Rule of Law in an Incipient Integral Age

 

Did aRchontic, Canaanite, demon-possessed, androgynous light beings from the dark purple realm insinuate themselves within us?                 

“Purple haze is 'a slightly enchanted liberatory intuition that, paradoxically, also imparts a perplexing sense of being confined, confused or subject to the inherently ‘dissociative’ fog of a demanding, pseudo-sovereign 'other' ”. 

The color purple is traditionally associated with the royal sovereign or king; consider Gibbon, who reports:

The rescripts of the emperor, his grants and decrees, his edicts and pragmatic sanctions, were subscribed in purple ink, and transmitted to the provinces as general or special laws, which the magistrates were bound to execute, and the people to obey.” [and in his footnote on “purple ink”: “A compound of vermilion and cinnabar, which marks the Imperial diplomas from Leo I. (A.D. 470) to the fall of the Greek empire.]

- The Decline and Fall of the Roman 

Empire, 1946, Vol. 2, at p.1439

Thesis:  Integral consciousness cannot integrate consciousness structures unless each of the efficient forms of those structures are first “reconstituted” so as to function optimally as non-malignant, proportional parts of the whole. 

Inquiry: If the rule of law is a product of the mental structure, then what becomes of it within the new milieu of integral consciousness whose constituent stages are themselves poorly integrated? 

NOTE: This blog post is an embellishment on my doctoral dissertation: 

The Odyssey of the Western Legal Tradition — Integral Jurisprudence: Toward the Self-Transcendence of Deficient-Mental Legal Culture. (2006), 321 pages (Order No. 3238290, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses). Abstract and table of contents are freely accessible at:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/304955482

A.  Reconstituting Structures of Consciousness

The “originary custom” of nomadic, primal peoples (as aptly demonstrated by their accomplished shamans) is, or should be, one essential element of an integral model — one that helps to heal the pre-mental, “dissociative self” of modern, would-be integralists.

What is suggested is a process of retrieval of the efficient forms of the archaic, magic and mythical structures. Arguably, this retrieval can precipitate a reconciliation toward a more “associated self” through a holistic reconstitution of the efficient aspects of pre-mental structures of consciousness. The modern, integralist adept might otherwise be exclusively or primarily concerned with overcoming the deficient mental structure, e.g., by struggling to reform a controlling ego, perhaps being at a loss as to how to do likewise with prior structures. Yet it is the initial process or precursor practice of retrieving the efficient aspects of pre-mental structures that lends a curative impetus toward the healing of the mental structure and thus might be a more ideal starting place for the integralist adept. 

While not discounting the fact that various contemplative practices, e.g., prayer and meditation, may indeed lead an adept to a newly associated sense of a (pre-mental) self, shamanic processes in particular may be efficacious. By whatever process or practice, retrieval and holistic reconstitution of prior structures in an “associated self” prepares one for their integration with the mental structure through integral consciousness. 

Pertinent to the discussion of “wholeness,” however, is a consideration of non-sedentary, less hierarchical primal peoples whose mythical consciousness maintains that bondedness or Abram’s “perceptual reciprocity” with the “multiple non-human sensibilities that animate the local landscape” ((Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books, pp. 56, 9, respectively.)  

Notwithstanding acceptance of Jean Gebser’s theory on the effect of the intensification of consciousness of prior structures, I theorize that for such peoples the efficient pre-mental structures are always already presentiated; these pre-mental structures are less attenuated than they are in moderns because these structures have been experienced over much more enduring spans of time, continuing up until the present, and non-atrophied by effects on their dimensionality from a countermovement that would otherwise be caused by an intensified mythical or a narrowing mental structure of consciousness. 

Thus, on the issue of the degree to which wholeness is generally extant, I would qualify Gebser’s analysis. This I would do by making the diminution of the qualitative character of the individual structures dependent not only upon the number of mutations of consciousness in a society's individuals, but also upon whether we are referring to the more sedentary and hierarchical “moderns,” or to non-sedentary, hierarchically muted, primal peoples whose consciousness may be unquestionably more limited — yet is, in my opinion, “more whole” than is the case with typically dissociated moderns.

Gebser speaks of “a plus mutation” (Gebser, 1985, p.38).  He writes:

...all of our structures of awareness will have to be integrated into a new and more intensive form, which would in fact unlock a new reality. To that extent we must constantly relive and re-experience in a decisive sense the full depth of our past. (Gebser, 1985, p.4)

 

In order to achieve the requisite basis for the transformation to which we have alluded, we wish to present as a working hypothesis the four, respectively five, structures we have designated as the archaic, magic, mythic, mental and integral. We must first of all remain cognizant that these structures are not merely past, but are in fact still present in more or less latent and acute form in each one of us. (Gebser, 1985, p.42, emphasis in original)

If I am interpreting Gebser correctly, I concur to the extent that structures that are antecedent to the mental have been lumped together and are referred to in today’s common parlance as “the unconscious.”  This is to say that the extent to which we are dissociated from the earlier (healthy or efficient) stages of these structures is the extent to which we remain enthralled to them as puzzling remnants of poorly understood yet powerful emotional or imagined cues that often affect and control us in our everyday lives; and to the extent we remain controlled by magic/mythical prompts, rather than mastering these prior structures, they remain as our unconscious masters — those dissociated, misunderstood and mysterious parts of us remain latent and hidden from our “consciousness” in the murky depths only acting to confuse our being.        

The fact is, however, that psychology tells us human beings constantly draw on and act instinctively from this seemingly forgotten, unconscious side of ourselves. The fully integrated individual would strive to coordinate and bring pre-mental structures more to the foreground, resulting in a more properly proportioned wholeness of all structures. Attaining to this level of human development is to become more whole. And in the context of lived experience, integrating oneself means to exist in the wholeness of a reality of a consciousness attuned to a human noosphere; one harmonized with the biosphere and physiosphere, i.e., of both body and nature. In short, we retrieve/ reclaim/ recall largely atrophied aspects of our latent potential; what once were and still are essential qualities of our “human-ness.”

The long-term effect of causing a once associated (unalienated) psychological state of wholeness (a strong characteristic of both magic and mythical structures of consciousness) to engage a mental structure morphing into an emerging integral consciousness, transforms us into real human beings. That is, by so doing we can self-transcend toward becoming more authentically and wholly human (rather than the beaten down, sub-species idiots that millennia of archontic control, oppression and misdirection have rendered us).

To be clear, the deficiently operating pre-mental structures manifest themselves in both oppressor predators and in those whom they control; the former rely upon black (deficient) magic/mythical regimes, while the latter become stupefied in ignorance from a weak association with these consciousness structures, thus making them perfect candidates for mind-controlled prey.  

B.  The Cultural Creatives

A place to look for a burgeoning integral worldview is by examining those values held by “Cultural Creatives” (as compared to “Traditionals” and “Moderns”).  (Ray, P., & Anderson, S. R. (2000). The cultural creatives: How 50 million people are changing the world. New York: Harmony Books)  

According to research conducted by Ray and Anderson, a subculture they call the “Cultural Creatives” has been emerging, particularly over the last generation or so. Their values are in harmony with, or at least closely approximate, those values considered characteristic of an integral worldview.  That is, Cultural Creatives are both inner-directed and socially concerned, caring deeply about ecology and properly stewarding the planet, about relationships, peace, and justice, about self-actualization, spirituality, and self-expression. They are generally disaffected with the materialism and consumerism of modern culture. 

Over twenty years ago, Ray and Anderson estimated that there were about 50 million Cultural Creatives in America, or about 26% of the adult population. (By 2021 that proportion has certainly risen.) The preponderance of the rest of the population are categorized as either “Moderns” or “Traditionals.” 

At the turn of the 20th Century Moderns were the dominant subculture (about 48% of the U.S. population), tracing their lineage back about 500 years to the beginnings of rationalism and modern science.  They are “the people who accept the commercialized urban-industrial world as the obvious right way to live.” (Ray & Anderson, 2000, p.27)

Ray and Anderson describe the Traditionals as the first counterculture, branching off from the Moderns around 1870.  The Traditionals are now about 25% of the U.S. population and declining [or arguably merging into a more conservative Cultural Creative camp] — they once comprised about 50% of the population around the time of World War II.  They are largely cultural and religious conservatives who maintain or seek a simplistic, black-and-white certainty in their views, and who yearn for an idealized, romanticized, and more idyllic “simpler time” (that may in fact never have existed).  It is in the ready acceptance of religious convictions received from “divinely inspired sacred texts” that the worldview of Traditionals can be seen as preserving a more mythical consciousness. (Note: In retrospect, these qualitative researchers may have been promoting a progressivist agenda using the term "Cultural Creatives" as a cover. Still, the work is useful as a lens of understanding from social trend perspectives, e.g., from the standpoint of one being biased against the values and beliefs of Traditionals.) 

The following chart lists the values and beliefs among the three subcultures (in the year 2000):

Ray & Anderson, p. 29 (2000)

Cultural Creatives tend to value both intellectual pursuit and spiritual development.  Hence, this subculture may be naturally inclined and relatively well-disposed toward the integral theories of Gebser and/or the integral yoga of Aurobindo. But the important point with regard to Cultural Creatives, in comparison to the other two subcultures, is that they are more prone to actively engage and apply their values in the world.  Ray & Anderson (2000) also reported that there are more activists, volunteers, and contributors to causes than in either of the other subcultures.

Thus, the values practiced by Cultural Creatives, largely learned by direct experience in the world, might be expressed, phenomenologically, in the sense of a preference for “being” over “thought.” As such, just “being” one of the estimated 50+ million Cultural Creatives may be the most common path toward realizing an integral worldview.  Such an “accidentally heuristic” path, tending toward everyday praxis, would seem to suit the needs of the ordinary person, whether or not he or she is consciously seeking an integral worldview through the integral structure of consciousness. For example, we might consider that the lawyers currently engaged in new law practice models are developing integral worldviews and whose work, by whatever name, approximates the theoretical precepts and practical values espoused by Cultural Creatives that are also associated with integral jurisprudence.

However, the three categories of Ray and Anderson must be seen as fluid and overlapping. The panopticon of media subjects all human beings within eye- and ear-shot of its messaging to being programmed into accepting and tolerating those superficial values characteristic of being a Modern. Subversive infiltration into all institutions has subjected Traditionals and Cultural Creatives to Marxist-style mind control. But in the past twenty years intrepid online and in-person sharing of data has given rise to alliances between Traditional believers and Cultural Creatives of faith, on the one hand, versus a secular-to-atheist (Luciferian) merging of Moderns and Cultural Creatives on the other. (The data in the above table have not predicted such mergers, instead portraying Moderns and Traditionals cleaving to one another with Cultural Creatives as the "progressive pioneers of forward-looking change"— perhaps a major shortcoming of the study and the book.) 

The “media is the message” ecological pollution that conditions and separates people lends more weight to considering subcultural groups who tend to insulate themselves from the “messaging,” viz., those non-sedentary, less hierarchical, insular folks who live more in originary custom than they do in the (over-legalized-and-regulated, generally deficient-mental) modern world.

And so the Cultural Creative designation while interesting and somewhat helpful can also become yet another divisive tool that separates and alienates. Beware! 

Still, when considering how we come to govern ourselves as societies within a connective culture of national-to-planetary identity, natural rhythms of consciousness evolution and social ordering are continually in play. This gives rise to a perhaps ingenious new method of self-understanding humanity and our world through yet another ordering lens referred to as “metapolitical.”

C.  Metapolitical Theory

An overview of metapolitical theory[1]is here presented as an alternate yet analogous take on the integral worldview.  Metapolitical theory takes up the thread of moving beyond the old paradigms of secularism (Modernist worldview) and "traditional myth religion" (Traditionalist worldview)[2]. This new, general theory provides an additional contextual template or analytical lens. It can be used, e.g., to further discussions of how the rule of law fares under both deficient mental legal culture and integral jurisprudence. 

The mutation from mental/rational to integral consciousness might be seen by theorist Mark Ettlin as the evolution from 4th to 5th order being (See Kegan, 1995)[3]

[I]t is at this [5^th order] epistemological stage that we may see a deeper differentiation and integration of three kinds of value roughly prefigured by what our mythic/rational society has tended to call the Beautiful, the True, and Good. I refer to these three kinds of value as X, Y, and Z value, or as ontological, technological, and epistemological value, and use such suggestive triads as eternity, time, and history to explore them. 

The 5^th order self is more discipline than identity.  It is an inquiry into value. Ettlin describes it as the dialectical and reflexive order par excellence, the term “metapolitical” specifically referring to his conception of a Z-value discipline of the “citizen.” That is, metapolitical is used to indicate the reflexivity and philosophical quality of a 5^th order political discipline in which politics cannot be separated from epistemology, participant anthropology, and an ongoing attempt to place ourselves in and as an evolving, historical intelligence.  Thus, Ettlin concludes that

[D]emocracy is necessary not only because it is more fair (the politics of redistribution) or more respectful of human freedom/dignity/identity (the politics of recognition), but because only a radical democracy can realize itself as a lucid and sane historical mind. This is the ‘draw’ of Z value. We live in each others’ minds, and if some of us are insane, all of us are insane. A hegemonic community necessarily suffers what Habermas calls “systemic speech distortion,” a fancy term for insanity.  The metapolitical is a term that tries to indicate the intrinsic delight of a philosophical citizenship, where “sophia” is the emergent historical intelligence of an exuberantly reflexive, dialogic, and self-transcending polis. 

According to Ettlin, as metapolitical citizens we concern ourselves with how we make and know ourselves as historical bodymind.  In this sense, the legal system we design and implement “contains” us, as do other historically emergent systems (e.g., educational, economic, recreational, and even transportation systems) that humanity has devised.  All of these systems mediate us and hence structure the ways in which we know ourselves, each other, and the world.  We “come to know” within an understanding of three distinct fields of value realization, viz., the value disciplines X, Y, and Z.  Under each X, Y, or Z field can be grouped what Ettlin metaphorically refers to as containers specific to that particular value field: 

X	Y	Z
Ontos	Cosmos	Polis
God/ Consciousness	The World (Other)	Mind(s)
Eternity	(Chronic) Time	History
Nondual	Hypothetically Dual	Dialectical
Ignorance	Intelligibility	Intelligence
Aformation	Information	Eformation
Cipher	Cyborg	Citizen
Agnosis	Science	Sophia
Who?	What?	Where?
Feeling	Seeing	Hearing

Ettlin warns readers, that these containers should be taken in stride, as some may tend to be “playful, cryptic, and intended for heuristic, speculative purposes.”  At the same time, however, these are for Ettlin in some sense “absolute” containers[4].  In a sense, a concern with how we contain and transcend ourselves as historical polis or Intersubject is intrinsic to the metapolitical citizen.  This means a welcoming and questioning of all three fields of value realization: X, Y, Z; or respectively, consciousness, the world, and other minds; or eternity, chronicity, and history; or, qualifiedly, Ontos, cosmos[5], and polis.  Ettlin argues that these three fields of value realizations only become explicit value disciplines within a 5th order or dialectical epistemology (or within what I would describe as integral consciousness).

For Ettlin, then, deficient mental legal culture would be just one symptom of a much greater, all-pervasive, and confusing “onto-technological[6]maze” that is insoluble from within a 4^th order (inevitably dualist) epistemology.  Accordingly, in the arena of human endeavors Ettlin asserts that we ever err by forever mixing up the fields of value realization, writing:

At present we live in a mythic/rational [Traditionalist/Modernist] society that is deeply terror-driven, power-interested, and dedicated to the perpetuation of inequalities that can only be maintained through epistemological inequality, that is, through the creation of an “Oriental” class capable of trust (and paranoia), and hence obedience (and programmed transgression) but incapable of verification, that is, of holding the Orientalists or “manufacturers of consent” accountable.  This has catastrophic consequences, not just in an epistemological sense, but for all three value disciplines.  We live in a society in which most people have no inkling of the importance (and delight) of “placing ourselves” in a collaborative and democratic fashion, that is, as citizen philosophers. If we do not democratically diagnose and design the fundamental containers that structure and mediate us, they will be designed for us and they will be designed in both stupid and “interested” ways. Hegemony is inevitably a degradation of our potential as historical intelligence.  Power inevitably under-realizes value. 

Ettlin’s metapolitical theory, then, might explain deficient legal culture in terms of an epistemological inequity between the rulers and the ruled; despite the democratic principles that inhere in the Western legal tradition’s avowed aim of establishing a just society, the confusion among fields of value realization has resulted in a legal culture in which “power inevitably under-realizes value.”[7] Currently, where “fewer than 400 people ‘control’ half the money in this world” (Wilson, P. L. (1998). Escape from the Nineteenth Century and other essays. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, p.134), what Ettlin would describe as a “degradation of our potential as historical intelligence” manifests as a withering of social emancipation in the face of social regulation imposed under the guise of democratic pretensions, and the “rule of law” is manifested by an ontological hegemony that has effectively divided the globe into zones of comfort (the”West”)[8] zones of security (e.g., the “Pacific Rim”), and zones of depletion (much of the Southern Hemisphere).

Perhaps the most crucial container the citizen considers is the polis itself, in the Z-field of value realization wherein jurisprudence also most properly resides. How does the polis reproduce itself? How does it educate its young into 5^th order epistemes and disciplines? How do we practice politics and law together?  How do we talk to each other?  From within the framework of what Ettlin characterizes as the “adversarial humanism of our day, with its implicit war ontology,” politics and law are adversarial, power-oriented, and implicitly terror-driven.  They have little to do with a discipline that seeks to realize value through intersubjective exchange, through listening to others to get a sense of horizons that one cannot see in “objective” fashion.

Instead, Ettlin seeks to encourage metapolitical circles that he believes would precede the emergence of a true metapolitical society, writing:

Such circles will be experimental in nature and will be drawn to explore and formulate the practices and mind that constitute the metapolitical (or Z-value) discipline itself.  They will ask, “How do we create and practice a collective historical Mind or Intersubject that leverages reflexive knowing?  How do we participate in this Mind”?  In an interesting way this polis, Mind, or Intersubject is a container and an agent, a ground and a figure.  It does not dissolve or abrogate individual minds, and yet it achieves a kind of collective coherence and unity.[9]

Ettlin is designing a Metapolitical Institute, which he intends to be the instrument by which he hopes to generate resources and practices intended to draw people into metapolitical circles and the discipline of metapolitical citizenship.  For example, there are some containers to which metapolitical citizens must attend in their collaborative inquiries. 

He calls some of these containers “macromaterials.”  All materials are generated by human beings who discern principles in matter and proceed to develop, diversify, and integrate matter into more complex forms and systems.  Trees are a material.  A law book is a material.  A legal system is a macromaterial.  All materials entail human practices and ways of knowing.  At the level of the macromaterial such practices and epistemes are often highly complex. 

Capital is a kind of economic macromaterial. The metapolitical citizen would understand that the polis must contain the economy and not, as would be the preference of an ideologue of Capital, the other way round. While private property is plausible as a material, according to Ettlin, as a macromaterial private property must, as with all macromaterials, be democratically owned and controlled by its metapolitical citizen owners in a more custodial sense so that it would not despoil the environment or otherwise threaten the integrity of the polis.

Ettlin’s “fields of value realization” are compatible with, e.g., such integral values as are espoused by Cultural Creatives in the table above.  What distinguishes his “metapolitical values,” however, are their more organized categorizations into X, Y, or Z fields.  Much like Plato’s “the Beautiful, the True, and the Good,” or the “separation of powers” or “separation of church and state” doctrines, preserving separate noospheric identities for God, for science, and for politics [a characteristically mental attribute] clarifies the process by which humanity embarks on its acts of self-discovery; by not searching an inappropriate category to substantiate any particular issue that does not pertain to that category, fallacies can more easily be avoided.  Much human anguish can be traced to such fallacious undertakings.  Law has found itself in trouble when trying to inculcate a divine pre-text (X-field) to itself or an overly rigorous scientific (Y-field) approach in its theories and formulations.

While these excurses outside the proper domain of jurisprudence (Z-field) might be deemed to have been historically “necessary” — as in having prompted much debate and punctuated the evolution of the Western legal tradition with certain insights and developments — the deleterious effects of misplacing or misidentifying the values of jurisprudence are legion.

Examples of law premising itself on the divine right of rulers (X-field) would include the harsh inequities of laws enforced by “God-Kings” from Sumer, extending through the “lawgivers” of Greece and the “Age of Tyrants” in Rome, to persecutions in the name of God by the Church’s Inquisition and by the monarchies of pre-revolutionary Europe.   

The “science of law,” is an expression indicative of law’s mental tendency toward systematization.  Law resulting from empirically verifiable facts, forged in the real world of legal disputes and argumentation, can be traced to the early Greek Sophists, through the legal hermeneutics of Papinian and categorizations of Gaius, to the formulations of Justinian’s Code and, in more modern times, e.g., through the German Pandecists and the analytical-positivist approaches of Austin and Kelsen.  

The reaction to law’s emphasis on overly rigorous scientific values (Y-field), that favored the letter over the spirit or equity of law, became manifest in both the Romantic and democratic movements of the eighteenth century, culminating in the social question issue raised in the 19^th century as a response to industrialization, and the growing inequities in wealth and class privilege driven by the unjust totalitarian logic of Capital that, while being challenged, continues almost unabated today by means of a powerful global corporatocracy.  This anti-democratic alliance of business, government, and media, with seemingly unlimited resources, has much greater access to powerful law firms and lobbyists who are able to exert undue influence over the engines of power in the executive, legislative, and judicial spheres of the state.  

Any theory, from whatever source, that also puts forth a discipline capable of efficiently and effectively guiding both our minds and our hearts toward a more just and beautiful world, is a worthy one.  The integral worldview allows for meanings that are as unique as those who have sought to articulate them, whether they use different terminology, or are embracing and practicing values considered implicit in an integral worldview without being cognizant of any theoretical underpinning.  From this we might hypothesize that all of us may be witness to a single phenomenon — the dawning of a new integral structure — yet one that is characterized by multivalent, mutational surges of consciousness.  

Metapolitical theory is an important contribution to our investigations — not only in exploring the Western legal tradition itself, but also when considering the over-arching significance of the varying contexts within which jurisprudence has meandered; metapolitical theory posits an ordering of values that any thinking person might find extremely useful when trying to navigate through the harrowing thickets of being and reality, Spirit and Matter, body and soul, society and self, knowledge and wisdom.  

Formidably great individuals have slogged through these noospheric marshes in the past, only to get lost. Metapolitical theory certainly holds particular promise, not just as a map to escape consensual reality and culture trance, but also as a discipline capable of orienting us toward a reality gained through a fuller mastery of our human potential.  The extent to which it builds upon (yet, as its progenitor, Mark Ettlin, asserts, “goes beyond”) Gebser in its capacity to support an integral jurisprudence is worth pondering as the plasticity of the rule of law has currently been contorted beyond recognition. Hence, by whatever theoretical means, any anchoring in a fuller, more integral understanding of the rule of law is most welcome.

________________________

[1] “Metapolitical” is a term coined by independent scholar Mark Ettlin, and refers to an idealized conceptualization of humanity’s transformative interface with and engagement in fields of value realization.  Ettlin is the author of an as yet unpublished manuscript wherein he describes his theory and suggests a discipline toward developing a metapolitical society.  The term is further elaborated upon below.  Extracts quoted herein are from a personal correspondence with Ettlin.

[2]   Or, as Ettlin explains it: “There are two key problems. The reform problem is that of bringing the 3^rd order mythic class up to 4^th order.  This entails a move from trust to verification, or the capacity to ground one’s beliefs through scientific and rational procedures, using evidence.  But I argue that metapolitical circles would be ‘both/and’ in that they would be attempting this reform and at the same time experimenting with an evolution toward epistemology and practices/disciplines that are dialectical or 5^th order, and ‘beyond belief’ (where belief is understood as reification, as being in bondage to power: the final belief or ideology/belief system is perhaps that of the ‘cogito’). The current power elite is still embedded in a mythic/rational epistemology and one of my arguments is that people practicing and/or experimenting with a 5^th order epistemology may be able to ‘outsmart’ the current elite and nudge humanity from an emphasis on the possession of power to the realization of value.  Thus the distinction between power and value (entailing an understanding of power as the reification of value) is key to metapolitical theory.”

[3] Kegan’s entire genetic epistemology works with the subject/object process in which what has been subject (or a medium through which we see) becomes object.  We are embedded in our impulses at 1^st order and then we “have” (and can operate on) them at 2nd order.  We are embedded in abstractions at 3^rd order and then we “have” (and operate on) them at 4^th order, allowing us to construct “ideologies”.

[4]   Ettlin explains as follows: “All human meaning arises in eternity (pure consciousness), time (a realm of intelligible objectivity or ‘survival’), and history (the historical evolution of intersubjective intelligence ideally ‘culminating’ in a radically democratic, dialogic, and transparent polis).  This culmination is neither the end of history nor the suppression of the individual; it is merely the emergence of a degree of intersubjective reflexivity and coordination/communication that will allow societies to act with the ‘freedom’ that 4^th order liberalism (as exemplified by Wilhelm von Humboldt) desired for individuals.  These ‘containers’ must be distinguished from historically emergent containers [e.g., the legal, economic, educational, recreational or transportation systems, mentioned, supra].  The Z-value discipline focuses on the epistemological impact of historically emergent containers.”

[5]  Ettlin qualifies the first two of these terms: “ ‘Ontos’ is probably not rightly derived from the Greek.  Perhaps ‘consciousness’ is better, as this term would refer to Atman/Brahman or what I call Identity, and would be provisionally opposed to manifest bodymind and all ‘states of consciousness.’  ‘Cosmos’ or ‘kosmos’ also needs some unpacking.  In its standard form it reeks of onto-technology [defined infra]. I merely mean to emphasize the structured and principled ‘objectivity’ of the manifest.”

[6]  Ettlin defines onto-technology as: “the conflation of X and Y value, resulting in various ‘identity projects’ or attempts to ‘do Being,’ to possess or arrive at eternity in time, and so on.  This means a terror-driven and power-interested existence; in other words, a reified existence where reification means affective adherence to symbols and propositions.”

[7] More generally speaking, power is anything that we seek to possess (and hence that ‘possesses’ us) such that we are in bondage to it.  The move from power to value, in Ettlin’s theory, is a move from bondage/identity to discipline.  In today’s world, “Capital” is one – arguably the most potent – translation of “Power,” rooted as it is in mental-rational goals of economic growth fueled largely by commodity fetishism.  As a reified Y-value, the totalitarian logic of Capital, is incapable of assimilating the moral and spiritual dimensions of love, hope, compassion, imagination, intuition, aesthetic sensibility, and a deeply developed sense of empathy for each other, for all living things, and for all life-sustaining qualities of our environment.  Moreover, by Ettlin’s calculus, the status or the beautiful identity is another form of power, one anchored in the reification of X-value.  One reification can easily lead to the other.  Alienation from and reification of both X- and Y-value (resulting in onto-technology) is the problem, according to Ettlin, who professes not to follow a base/superstructure model wherein power is simply rooted in the economy. 

[8] Ettlin, however, does not think we can call the West a “zone of comfort.”  In his view, market globalization requires that only a small class in each country lives in increasing comfort or opulence, while life becomes progressively more uncomfortable and barren for everyone else.  Ettlin has a terminology for how state capitalism, caught as it is in a dualistic worldview, inevitably exhibits its inequitable features: “Exes of Evil,” the three ‘exes’ being extraction, externalization, and extermination. 

[9] In this way it resembles Hegel’s “Spirit”, but, according to Ettlin, “Hegel conflated Identity with Intersubject, and sought to recover Eternity through History, an Idealist error.”