In this article, written in response to the 2nd ITC conference (2010), Nick Shannon outlined four main vantage points from which teachings at the Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) elucidate and strengthen integral thinking: (1) upper left quadrant, (2) dialectical unfolding of concepts, (3) moving from contextual to transformation language, and (4) cognitive development and higher levels of consciousness. Shannon thought that in all of these regards, Otto Laske’s teaching clarifies and advances integral thinking. To this day, the promise of this teaching, more recently reinforced by Bhaskar’s dialectical writings (1990s), has remained largely unknown or unnoticed. We are reprinting N. Shannon’s thoughts here to invite further engagement of integral practitioners with dialectic, a recent topic of Laske’s book entitled “Dialectical thinking for integral leaders: A primer” (Integral Publishers, 2015).
Shannon, What can IDM offer the Integral Movement