Reviews of my work on dialectical thinking since 1999 are far and few between and have been long in coming. This delay has to do with the fact that my work on this topic responds directly to Bateson’s perceptive view that “the major problems in the world (today) are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think” (as quoted in this paper). Bateson’s perspective, much detailed philosophically by Roy Bhaskar, is a view of no interest in the present, entirely logic-based, global economy and its associated cognitive and social sciences.
In this clear and incisive article, John Stewart, organizer of the First Planning Meeting for the Second Enlightenment, explains in more detail why the topic of dialectical thinking touches upon the issue of the evolution of the human race and may well concern its survival. John Stewart on vol. 2 and Primer
In this article I share my experience of reading Bhaskar not as “philosophy” or “ontology” but as somebody who has superb insight into how what we call “reality” or “the real world” gets constituted in human thinking, and what are the fallacies occurring in this endeavor. Understanding these fallacies of human thinking, especially logical thinking, is in my view a beginning of designing better teaching and consulting programs, not only for individuals but also for teams. For this point of view, see also my 2015 entitled “Dialectical thinking for integral leaders: A Primer”, Integral Publishers, Tucson, AZ.
These comments retain their truth, in fact, they become truer every day that logical thinking strategies, now virtual, issue in new ways of controlling people, decidedly unbeknownst to them. The entire educational establishment, now focused on having students get a job, is blindly reproducing this logical “retainer system”. In Asia, at least, one finds an elementary dialecticism, but not a shadow of it in the western world. Under ever new labels the same product is sold over and over again, with tireless advertizing.
February 2017