“May God us keep
William Blake
From Single vision
and Newton’s sleep.”
There’s a peculiar type of reaction we get to reading somebody else’s thoughts in written form, which can only ever occur, I think, when we’ve been wrestling with the same problems as the author for a period of time. One of the great benefits of reading is being able to change our perspectives on the world for a short time by looking at it through the lens of somebody else. Sometimes, the value in that comes just from the change of mental scenery as we get out of our own heads for a while. In such cases, we may enjoy the work in a passive fashion and then get back to our own thoughts.
But it’s a very different thing when the writer has captured something important to us, whether we have been pursuing that something consciously or whether it has been bubbling away in our unconscious. In that case, reading can be genuinely exciting. I’ve had that experience several times over the last few years with books such as Patrick White’s Voss, Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, and, of course, recently with the authors whose work we have been reviewing in this series of posts: Jan Smuts and Ken Wilber.
In relation to Wilber, I’m happy to admit that his quadrant analysis is simply a better version of a model I’ve been trying to put together over the last few years. I had been thinking about the difference between materialism and esotericism, for example, using the levels of being concept. What Wilber added was a second dimension: an x-axis to go with the y-axis. Thus, the quadrant map can be used to analyse holons at the various levels of being, from quarks all the way to humans and whatever entities we can imagine above humans.
Wilber’s quadrants also make clearer a point that I have made using the levels of being concept and that is what Wilber calls quadrant fundamentalism. Quadrant fundamentalism is where one quadrant is assumed to hold the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the exclusion of all other quadrants. In this post, we’ll look at three types of quadrant fundamentalism that, not coincidentally, arose in chronological order in modern western history: scientific materialism, historical materialism (Marx), and irrationalism (Nietzsche, Spengler).
To refresh our memory about each quadrant, recall that the upper right (UR) refers to the perspective of objective reality consisting of objects viewed externally. Meanwhile, the lower right (LR) refers to systems of objects, again viewed from the exterior. The upper row is the view of the individual, and the lower row is the collective.
Modern materialist science is a combination of these. Newton derived his law of gravitation by examining the solar system i.e. the interactions between the sun and the planets. Meanwhile, Ludwig Boltzmann and James Clerk Maxwell provided a systemic account of the movement of gas in a container.
Beginning in the 19th century, materialism began to turn its attention to ever more complex systems, including economies, societies, and ecologies. This created two problems. One was that the systems under study were no longer able to be simplified to the point where calculation could be made. To this day, there are still people who think this problem can be solved by throwing more computing power at the issue, hence pipe dreams like quantum computing.
The second problem has nothing to do with calculation, but rather the question of freedom. When it comes to societies and ecosystems, the holons being accounted for (animals and humans) have far more of an interior component to them, and trying to explain their behaviour from a purely exterior perspective glosses over this fact. If that interior, esoteric component really is a kind of “freedom”, then no amount of computing power will be able to account for it.
Scientific materialism gets around this latter problem by assuming that there is no such thing as freedom and, in fact, that all the interior, esoteric properties of holons are nothing more than epiphenomena. This is a classic example of quadrant fundamentalism since it assumes that the left hand quadrants are irrelevant.
I’ve mentioned that it’s a weird synchronicity that I happened to read Patrick White’s novel The Vivisector right before Smuts and Wilber because it turns out that the vivisectors provide the perfect example to highlight the problem of scientific materialism, one that requires no technical understanding.
Recall that vivisection is the practice of cutting up live animals for nominally scientific purposes. The vivisectors had justified this practice with some strange philosophical doctrine whereby animals didn’t have souls and therefore couldn’t feel real pain. From the point of view of the quadrants, what the vivisectors were doing was completely ignoring the UL quadrant, which is the locus of feelings and emotions, including pain. This attitude was not limited to animals. A good example of how (some) humans were treated at this time can be read in a history of convict-era Australia. Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore is perhaps the most eloquent of those.
Thus, our first example of quadrant fundamentalism is scientific materialism and we can see that this ideology was not limited to the scientific domain but had broader social and political ramifications. We should acknowledge, of course, that scientific materialism led to some incredible breakthroughs and insights which very largely created the world we live in. This just shows that over-enthusiasm may be as strong a factor in quadrant fundamentalism as more negative traits.
While scientific materialism dealt only with atoms, molecules, and other inanimate objects, it did little harm. The harm came from believing that it could account for everything, even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. This leads into our second example of quadrant fundamentalism, which also belongs to the materialist camp since we can call it historical materialism following the work of Karl Marx.
Marx was primarily concerned with economies as viewed from their exterior systemic perspective i.e. the lower right (LR) quadrant. One of the main insights of historical materialism was how the economic system (the “base” in Marxist theory) seems to align with the ideologies that justify it. For Marx, ideology was just a symbol that pointed back to the economic base from which it was derived. Thus, feudal economies, capitalist economies, and socialist ones all have a certain type of ideological structure that goes with them. The base determines the ideology. Taken to an extreme, this notion proposes that our individual beliefs (UL) and our cultural beliefs (LL) are nothing more than stories that justify the economic system in the LR quadrant.
Historical materialism captures a very important truth about individuals and societies. You might have heard the saying, it’s hard to make somebody understand something when their salary requires that they don’t understand it. How we earn our living does affect our thinking. We are naturally predisposed to have a favourable opinion of the institutions from which we receive our daily bread. Even people who hate their job and constantly complain about it prove Marx’s point, which is that the job determines the ideology. A lot of the self-loathing we see in the modern West is due to the rise of bullshit jobs. Marx realised that the ideologies circulating in the public sphere are often there to justify a particular economic state of affairs. This all happens automatically and unconsciously.
It’s true to say that the LR quadrant has a strong effect on the UR and LL quadrants, especially as those relate to moral and political ideology. That insight is not just valid but crucial to an understanding of human affairs. The problem, once again, begins when we come to think that this explanation accounts for everything in the world. In the case of historical materialism, it means that all other quadrants are reduced to the LR. Any interior states whatsoever are now viewed as nothing more than reflections of the economic system. Ironically, this gives the historical materialist an excuse to exercise power at the ideological level instead of the material, which is now the main form of political power exercised in western nations.
One example of historical materialist quadrant fundamentalism comes from a work by one of the best Marxist thinkers, Georg Lukacs, in his book The Destruction of Reason. The overall point of the book is highly valid since it presents an analysis of the existential crisis that occurred in the German-speaking lands in the 19th and 20th centuries and shows how this accompanied an economic and political crisis. That is a valid and important perspective on the matter. But Lukacs takes it way too far by explaining away the entire philosophies of great thinkers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
Lukacs’ treatment of Nietzsche is particularly grievous. I’ve read pretty much all of Nietzsche’s work. If I were to write a list of the top 10 themes in Nietzsche’s philosophy, socialism, economics, and imperialism would not be on that list. These topics probably wouldn’t even be on a top 20 list for the simple reason that Nietzsche wasn’t primarily concerned with them. Yet Lukacs argues that Nietzsche’s philosophy was motivated by the imperialist politics that Germany ended up taking. He even chastises Nietzsche for not understanding either socialism or economics in general.
Well, yes, Nietzsche didn’t understand socialism or economics because he was not primarily concerned with either subject. Why would he be? He was a professor of philology. He was, in fact, a genius at philology, and his philosophical writings reflect his background. Having himself made the claim that Nietzsche’s writings were related to socialism and imperialism, Lukacs then posthumously criticised Nietzsche for not knowing anything about socialism or imperialism.
What makes Lukacs’ analysis even worse is that it’s not hard to find passages in Nietzsche where he was explicitly warning about the emerging imperialism in Germany at that time. In fact, Nietzsche seems to have foreseen the calamity of the world wars and we have to remember that he was almost a lone voice in that respect since most respectable thinkers of the time believed war was a thing of the past.
In short, Lukacs was imposing his own ideology on Nietzsche. Having already decided that philosophy (UL quadrant) must always be a flimsy excuse for economic materialism (LR quadrant), he simply stated that Nietzsche’s philosophy must be an example of exactly that, even when Nietzsche’s philosophy directly and explicitly contradicts this reading.
We can now start to get a sense of what quadrant fundamentalism is using the examples of scientific materialism and now historical materialism (Marxism). Quadrant fundamentalism is what happens when you attempt to “reduce” one quadrant to the terms of another. But it goes a step further by denying the other quadrants altogether. Sometimes this is done explicitly. Most of the time, it is done unconsciously.
The vivisectors (scientific materialists) denied the UL quadrant (the pain and suffering) in the animals that they were cutting up. For them, animals were simply machines that had no souls and therefore could not feel pain. In truth, the vivisectors had denied their own UL quadrant. They ignored the evidence right in front of their eyes. Thus, quadrant fundamentalism is a form of dissociation. The vivisectors had dissected their own psyche.
Historical materialism is a more sophisticated version of the same dynamic. Rather than completely ignoring another quadrants, it views the phenomena of those quadrants as nothing more than symbols that point back to the LR quadrant i.e. economic interest. Thus, Lukacs can claim that the entire output of two of the great philosophers, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, was little more than a cover for imperialist interests. This requires him to ignore what both of those philosophers have to say about their own positions because whatever they say is a priori just a cover for economic interests.
The irony is that it is exactly this denial of the interior states of reality that motivated Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the other existentialist thinkers. They were railing against the de-spiritualisation and de-humanisation that came with materialist dogma. So, too, was another thinker that I’ve written about a lot over the past few years: Oswald Spengler. Spengler was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, but just like Lukacs took the work of Marx too far, so did Spengler take Nietzsche too far and end up with his own form of quadrant fundamentalism.
Spengler’s quadrant fundamentalism was the mirror image of the historical materialists in that he wished to reduce all other quadrants down to the LL i.e. culture. Whereas Lukacs saw ideology as a symbol pointing to economic interest (LR), Spengler saw everything, including science and even mathematics, as a symbol pointing back to culture. Culture was the fundamental reality of the world, and all thought, architecture, art, and other human activities were to be explained as a working out of the core themes of a culture that came into being at the birth of that culture.
Once again, it has to be said that there is much truth in the basic idea that culture influences the other quadrants. To take just one example, there is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has a lot of supporting evidence from linguistics and cognitive science and says that our native language influences not just our conscious thoughts about the world but our real-time interpretations of it. That is, what we perceive in the world is influenced by the ontological commitments baked into the language we speak. The same is true for other aspects of the culture to which we belong. Clearly, the LL quadrant affects the others.
However, just like the scientific and historical materialists, Spengler takes a truth about the world and amplifies it to the point of fundamentalism. In fairness, he doesn’t try to hide his position. Towards the end of the first volume of Decline of the West, he openly states that the individual is nothing and culture and society are everything. For him, the UL quadrant, subjective reality, is nothing more than a set of symbols that get their meaning from the LL. This is a form of reductionism that is identical to materialism only in the other direction.
The irony of the whole thing is that the validity of Spengler’s analysis comes from an appeal to a kind of cultural “intuition,” which really amounts to nothing more than Spengler’s own interpretation of the world. Thus, Decline of the West is almost entirely a book of Spengler’s own subjective interpretation of the world. In a book of more than a thousand pages, Spengler barely cites any other thinkers or scholars in support of his analysis. He doesn’t need to, because the assumption is that he has a direct line of communication with the culture via instinct or intuition.
It’s for this reason that when Spengler gets something obviously wrong, it calls into question his entire framework because it makes us doubt his intuition. I mentioned in a post about a year ago a grievous error in Spengler’s interpretation of Dostoevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov. The details of the error are not important except to say that Spengler ignored all the most basic facts of the novel to come up with an interpretation whereby the character Ivan represents the “Russian soul.” Since Spengler relies almost entirely on Dostoevsky to justify the existence of his purported “Russian soul”, this error almost entirely collapses the whole argument.
Here we see that Spengler had done to Dostoevsky what Lukacs did to Nietzsche, namely, to read his own ideological bias into the other’s work. We can see, therefore, that quadrant fundamentalism implies a lack of empathy. There is an unwillingness to understand other people and other quadrants on their own terms. What is peculiar in these cases is the extreme lack of empathy on display.
The vivisectors had to completely ignore the cries of pain from the animals they were cutting up. Lukacs had to completely ignore what Nietzsche himself says in his own philosophy. Spengler had to completely ignore the reality of the characters in The Brothers Karamazov as well as the basic facts of the plot and the larger themes of the novel, which Dostoevsky was clearly exploring. This unwillingness to understand others on their own terms before imposing an ideological interpretation on them is at the heart of quadrant fundamentalism.
This brings us to the final twist in the story because what Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche were all about was re-instating the dignity and importance of the individual in the face of these de-humanising ideologies. It could be argued that they, too, went overboard and committed their own version of quadrant fundamentalism. All could be charged with a kind of radical subjectivism that locates the source of truth entirely in the individual. For example, Dostoevsky’s Alyosha character has precisely no interest in science, politics, and certainly not economics, while Nietzsche’s superman is the one who can create their own values free of the vagaries of the mob.
I don’t think this is actually true of any of these thinkers, and it’s precisely for that reason that I rate them all much higher than Spengler and Lukacs, both of whom definitely did descend into quadrant fundamentalism. In fact, all three have much in common with Smuts in that they did not deny the other quadrants but asserted that individualism was a late arrival on the scene and represented the forefront of evolution. This also seems to be Wilber’s position. It’s not about solipsistic individualism, but integrated individualism.
Even though I don’t believe Nietzsche, Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky fell into quadrant fundamentalism, it seems that our society is committing exactly this error as we speak. Especially in the last few decades, we find the belief emerging that individuals may declare a self-identity and society must fall into line. The trans debate is the ultimate manifestation of that dynamic. Thus, as a society we have now slipped into a fourth version of quadrant fundamentalism in which individuals (the UL quadrant) are encouraged to deny all scientific, cultural and social realities i.e. all the other quadrants.
The good news is that this is the last form of quadrant fundamentalism that has not yet been tried. I think it’s safe to say that we have now reached Bingo. Maybe we are now ready for a truly integral approach.
Hello Simon,
I think Monty python may have explored the interconnectedness of the upper and lower left hand quadrants.
Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!
Crowd: Yes! We’re all individuals!
Brian: You’re all different!
Crowd: Yes, we are all different!
Man in crowd: I’m not…
Crowd: Shhh!
Sue – hah! Yes, the only way not to be part of a crowd is to not be part of a crowd.
“Maybe we are now ready for a truly integral approach.”
I hope so. Perhaps you can do a take on why you think Wilber’s attempt to make integral waves did a noses dive and what the next wave of integral guildmakers can learn from the burn.
Jinasiri – yes, I have a few theories about that which I’ll write up. Actually, it’s implied by one of the very few differences between my archetypal calculus and Wilber’s integral theory and the Hero’s Journey is the, ummm, hero of the story 😛
“There is an unwillingness to understand other people and other quadrants on their own terms. What is peculiar in these cases is the extreme lack of empathy on display.”
In your Voss post you concluded that the integral requires a leap into love. Here’s a quote from an Early Buddhist text giving the standard formula for how to cultivate love, compassion, rejoicing and equanimity, aka. the four Brahmaviharas (Houses of Brahma/God):
“They meditate spreading a heart full of love to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. in the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.
“They meditate spreading a heart full of compassion to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. in the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.
“They meditate spreading a heart full of rejoicing to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. in the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.
“They meditate spreading a heart full of equanimity to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. in the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.”
The practice is only complete if all four directions, sometimes translated as quarters, are thoroughly encompassed and imbued. Without love, the pursuit of knowledge leads surely and swiftly into dogma. When we train scientists, judges and economists in how to reason, do we also teach them how to love? Was this what White is asking in Voss and The Vivisector? Can Australians discover a way to love that encompasses and fills up the big empty of post-modernity?
Very interesting. The juxtaposition of love and knowledge was a favourite theme of the existentialist and I think the reason is because the West inherited two traditions that focus on each. Thus, we get both Socrates and Jesus. One is the supreme knower, the other the supreme lover (most of the time!). Both were put to death by their respective societies. Is there a way to combine knowledge and love? In a roundabout way, I think that’s what the romantic tradition eg. Nietzsche was getting at and Patrick White belongs in that group.
Hi Simon,
The Fatal Shore was an excellent read and certainly cast a cold light on an unpleasant era down under that most historians many years ago would prefer have remain unlit. When the cold winds blow on a wintry night up in the mountains, it’s hard not to recall the descriptions of convicts cutting in the road over the Blue Mountains by hand tool, and the horrendous conditions they suffered. The hand tools were often not up to the job, and the convicts paid the price.
Nietzsche from my perspective was right to be concerned about that lack. I’ve observed that often people end up hating upon people and/or things which they’ve done a wrong too. If that path were not taken, it may force the person to reconsider their previous decisions and/or positions. You can see that in how materialism treats the natural world – you know, the thing which keeps us all alive and hopefully well. 🙂
I’m currently reading your brief analysis and mention of the origins of the uni sector, and cogitating upon the weirdness of the recent referendum, not to mention woke ideology, and was wondering whether the exterior, or you know, exoteric has sort of encompassed the realms of ideas – which were previously part of the esoteric realms. Of course I may be parroting back to you, your ideas. Dunno. But of late it’s hard not to notice the pressure to conform to certain belief systems, whether they stand up to reality, or otherwise. I’m curious as to your thoughts in this matter?
Cheers
Chris
Chris – I think a lot of the rigidity of the ideas we’re seeing is precisely because those ideas don’t work. It’s already a system of failure.
The progression goes something like this: (1) have great idea (in theory) –> (2) put great idea into action –> (3) see idea fail to produce expected result.
Now, the next step should be “go back to step 1 and re-evaluate”. Instead, what always happens is “double down and demand that anybody who points out the failure is a racist, homophobic, whatever-phobic bigot”.
Funnily enough, this even happens in science. Of course, the real problems begin when the people who are wrong and in denial have enormous political power. That’s pretty much where we are right now in the West with neoliberalism being the great idea that has failed.
Hi Simon
This comment is a bit off topic, but I am currently reading ‘The Devouring Mother’ and just wanted to say what a great read it is! It brings together many topics that I have never previously linked and is explaining many concepts that I have pondered but never fully understood. It’s certainly sparking many conversations in our household as we explore the ideas that you are presenting. Sandra (Fernglade Farm)
Sandra – glad to hear it! You might consider reading “The Universal State of America” afterwards. It aims to provide a historical analysis of the Devouring Mother 😉