Tag: Deep Thinking

In this blog, I  point to the de-totalization of human consciousness that is presently  state of the art in research in adult development. This de-totalization occurs on account of the absence of research on the way in which the social-emotional capability, shed light on by Loevinger and Kegan, intrinsically relates to the cognitive capability researched by Basseches, Commons, and Bhaskar, as well as myself. This de-totalization shows the stark limits of present research in adult development. It reflects a broken humanism as we experience it every day now. Is there a Bridge Between ED and CD Read More...

The Frankfurt School is well known, liked or not liked, due to its pervasive influence in the domain of culture critique. As on account of increasing threats to democracy its legacy is once more coming to the fore, there is a strong tendency to focus on the products and results of the school's activity while totally bypassing quite another legacy of the school, namely, rigorous teaching of complex, 'dialectical' thinking. In this blog, a veteran attendant of Frankfurt School Hauptseminars, directed by Max Horkheimer and Th. W. Adorno, from 1958 to 1966, Otto Laske, speaks up to remind those interested in the school of its huge promise for helping (young and young remaining) minds achieve new depths of reflection and circumspection, not only about society, but also about the cosmos at large and about themselves in their societal and ecological predicament. Otto Laske reviews the teachings of the school's Hauptseminar which focused on Hegel's Logic of 1812-16 as a vehicle for achieving fluid and holistic systemic thinking, more than ever needed in the world we live in, which we created without much further thought about the consequences of our actions supported by fabulous technologies. Taking a measure of Hauptseminar teaching... Read More...

The future of work is not a topic for logical thinking as much as it is one for revamping logical into complex, 'dialectical', thinking. The difference between the two is explained and exercised in a workshop in Brussels whose program can be downloaded here. If interested in this workshop, held on January 18, 2019, near Brussels, write to [email protected], my co-author of a book on collaborative intelligence of teams entitled "Dynamic Collaboration" (2018). In the downloadable attachment, the program is commented upon from a dialectical-thinking point of view by Otto Laske. Program Jan 18 2019 Brussels Read More...

In this interview published in the Integral Leadership Review (May 2018), Otto Laske answers questions posed by Robin Wood regarding his social-science work. Special emphasis lies on Otto's book recently co-authored with Jan De Visch entitled "Dynamic Collaboration" (2018). The wide-ranging interview touches upon many issues of present day culture fostered by logical control schemes that pervade contemporary thinking. Among these issues is the lack of complex thinking in the integral movement whose constituency continues to ride what Laske calls the social-emotional triumphalism train anchored in Kegan's work (a term that has some of the original Roman connotations, such as annihilation of what does not fit in.). Universal lack of attention to cognitive development beyond binary logic, exacerbated by apps that suppress internal dialog, is seen as significantly contributing to the global crisis societies are presently experiencing. The interview advocates replacing a logical and monological mindset, now rampant in both research and practice, with a dialogical mindset in terms of which 'Mind' stops being bottled up in single individuals but is, instead, seen as intrinsically dialogical, thus as a distributed system linking body, self, and social reality. ILR Interview of Otto Laske by R. Wood May 2018 Read More...

The papers collected in this blog center around the topic of complex thinking as a hallmark of individual freedom, organizational effectiveness, and societal well-being. They all focus on Lebensbefreiung, the unburdening from needless linear clutter in the mind and the obfuscation of communication. The articles point to, and explicate, a tradition of deep thinking that in the Western tradition began with Plato and survived to the time of Hegel and Heidegger, but through the onslaught of social media and simplistic 'agile' tool kits is presently at risk of being disavowed and forgotten, not only in education, but in training and management. The research reported in these papers is based on DTF, the Dialectical Thought Form Framework (Laske 1999, 2008, 2015, see publications at https://interdevelopmentals.org/publications/). DTF is a synthesis and refinement of work done by Basseches (1984), Bhaskar (1993), and Jaques (1994). It was born of the need to gain a comprehensive concept of adult development that has gone missing in the work of Loevinger, Kegan, and other 'developmental' researchers and their followers (like Wilber) by one-sidedly focusing on social-emotional, not also cognitive, development. By contrast, DTF transcends meaning-making toward sense-making both of which are needed to understand adult development in... Read More...

In diesem Blog stelle ich die wichtigsten der von mir seit 2004 deutsch geschriebenen sozialwissenschaftlichen Texte und Lernmaterialien zusammen. Sie betreffen thematisch, was ich Lebensbefreiung nenne, in dem Sinne, dass sie es dem Leser ermoeglichen, sein oder ihr eigenes Leben entwicklungsmaessig in tieferer Weise als bloss psychologisch zu verstehen, naemlich auf 'epistemische' Weise, die die Art und Weise betrifft, in der sich jeder von uns seine eigene Welt schafft. Die Texte zeigen, wie jeder von uns eine lebenslange Entwicklung durchlaeuft, welche die dramatischen Veraenderungen unserer Erfahrung der realen Welt ("Wirklichkeit") als von uns selbst konstruiert, und also auch als von uns selbst verantwortet, darstellt. Sie enthalten zudem eine Ideologiekritik sowohl positivistischer wie spiritualistischer Ansaetze zur Erklaerung unseres Lebenslaufs und unserer Lebensprobleme. Methodologisch gesehen betreffen diese Schriften meine Arbeit mit dem Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF, 2000), einer sozial-wissenschaftlichen Methodologie, die human resources insofern revolutioniert, als sie erstmalig empirische Daten zum persoenlichen Entwicklungsstand von Mitarbeitern in Unternehmen zur Verfuegung stellt, die eine Grundlage nicht nur von Coaching, sondern auch von Karriereberatung und Team-Aufstellung werden koennen. Zudem leisted CDF auch im Privatleben Hilfestellung einfach deswegen, weil es zu einem Verstaendnis des persoenlichen Entwicklungsverlaufs und Entwicklungsstandes beitraegt, das weder von der Psychologie noch von... Read More...