As a member of a society that is an illegitimate daughter of Euro American Modernity, I as many people, have inherited the fantastic cultural advances that came with the rise of this period of history characterized by a succession of advances in science, technology, democracies, human rights, independent justice, distinction between State and Church, industrial revolution, mass access to health, information, education, etc. An added number of privileges that were unthinkable for my ancestors.

      Modernity as such, appeared in the late days of the Renaissance and continued throughout Illustration, with Decartes, Kepler, Galilei and Newton as some of its most emblematic figures. From its place of birth, Europe, modernity spread across North America, a land that stopped being a colony sooner that South America and turned into the powerful United States we all know today. It created the greatest cultural and technological advances in the history of Mankind and also, without denial, the most terrifying war machinery.

      What today is the Argentine Republic was also a colony and in 1853, as a consequence of the Alberdi generation, we imitated the United States and England with a liberal constitution which "formally" marked our entrance into Modernity. But a century and a half later, our roots, our cultural faults and the outcome observed in social order, resemble more closely a premodern society than a liberal republic.

      Ongoing military coups and weak democratic governments are a clear sign of our premodernity. Last December 10 th , we celebrated our first 20 years of uninterrupted democracy since the thirties. In spite of that fact, our country continues to be a conglomerate of feuds governed by old political leaders that get their power from structural corruption more than from legitimate popular will. The saddest well known example of this deplorable system is Carlos Menem, and I would like to stop at this point to turn our sight toward the North.

      For a decade, this pathetic sinister character literally sold our country, with the passive complicity of a society that was numbed and a middle class that fell in love with the idea of "belonging" to the first world. (I must admit that I bought that speech myself). But the politician from the province of La Rioja was presented in Washington as the clearest South American exponent of the only political and economic "right" model. A model that on a world basis led Fukuyama to claim "the end of history". Financial gurus pointed at Carlos Menem and his executioner Domingo Cavallo as examples to take a country out of underdevelopment and insert it into modernity. But the model that unscrupulously transferred state owned property to the best bidder, imploded on December 2001 in front of a financial crisis of extraordinary dimensions. An extremely high rate of unemployment and the collapse of a banking system that legally abused deposit owners, coupled with the exit of nearly 20 billion dollars, was obviously irrecoverable. It was at this moment that we Argentines looked into our faces again and realized that we are (and have always been) an impoverished country that stood far from the developed world.

      Porteños¹ (culturally proud as any) had to admit that we actually belonged to underdeveloped Latin America.

      And how are we doing in the North?

      What self criticism have multinational credit organizations made in regard to their loans to finance a fiscal deficit caused by structural corruption? That fabulous fraud called Foreign Debt, which is around 180 billion dollars that the North contributed to build, was and is a great farce. That money is not here. It has never been. It wasn't used to finance works in infrastructure, industrial development, education, health or technology. That great fraud is the outcome of corruption from the North to the South. That money rests in a number of numbered banking accounts that belong to politicians, financiers and businessmen inside the country and abroad.

      Does the North really care about what goes on in the South? Or is the North still an empire that lives from its colonies? When an American says "we Americans" it is clear that we, the "other" Americans, are not included in his reference. Americans from the South are only "sudacas", often considered as primitive, rough gauchos and ignorant.

      Don Beck and Christopher Cowan developed a psycho-anthropological model named "Spiral Dynamics" and pointed out that human consciousness, individually as well as collectively, expresses itself through "memes" or differentiated patterns of perception. These waves of consciousness go from the most primary and fragmented, to the more complex and integrated. And this fact is observed in individuals -no matter what country or race they belong to- and also in culture (shared values of a group of individuals).

      In order to illustrate the concept of memes, they assigned a color to each in the following manner. A beige meme (sensory-motor - archaic culture), the purple meme (magical-animistic culture), the blue meme (mythical-religious culture), the orange meme (individual-rational consciousness), the green meme (consciousness sensitive to the collective), the yellow meme (integrated and holistic consciousness) and turquoise memes (universal consciousness drawn to group interest) In the process of evolution, individuals, as well as societies, move toward more integrated memes of greater consciousness; from beige to turquoise.

      This model presents a revolutionary vision of mankind, its history, and its cultures; as emphasis is not placed on the color of skin, religion or ethnic group but in the state of consciousness (meme) upon which an individual basically stands, independently of the physical body used to express it.

      The blue meme, linked to mythical thought and feudal order, is very strong in these latitudes and is the foundation premodernity rests upon. Orange follows the blue meme (rationality and its cultural consequences; modernity).

      Our society is strongly rooted in the purple-blue-red with some orange shades. The North and its Modernity is predominantly orange but keeps in broad sections of its population, blue-red characteristics.

      The history of Europe is written with blood shed (red-blue) and its foreign policy was (and continues to be) imperialistic-expansive. North America practices another type of imperialism, the suction of wealth by means that are less obvious, more sophisticated, and hence, more deceitful: financial reengineering, large corporations, agricultural subsidies, NAFTA, etc. Although lately, and since September 11 2001, a setback in the red phase of imperial conception has taken place appealing to strength and violence to dominate, as we have witnessed in Irak and Afghanistan. Americans themselves, as a result of their maturity as a society, make deep inward and outward selfcriticism. A fact owed to the presence of the green meme which has the capability to think with enough sensitivity to take into account the existence of others (solidarity).

      We find this selfcriticism expressed in the thought of sharp intellectuals, such as linguist Noam Chosmky and the Nobel of Economy, Joseph Stiglitz or Susan Sotang (in her last book "About the suffering of others" ). Even in show business, celebrities of the height of Tim Robins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and filmmaker Michael Moore, point at the contradictions of American society, stressing its arrogance, its direct responsibility over the increase of poverty, its intolerance to others' freedom and, quoting Michael Moore, "the stupidity of white men".

      The United States lives in a bubble and the rest of the countries, either serve their interests with explicit consent, or are compulsorily exploited.

      Now what does poor Ken Wilber have to with all this? After all, he is a good guy and in fact has made a great contribution to the world of thought, for which reason I am profoundly thankful to him.

      As I mentioned in the beginning, a few days ago I received an e-mail invitation to participate in a workshop with Ken and other members of the Integral Institute : something very exclusive for only forty people for the "small" amount of US$ 3.500 (not including travel expenses nor hotel accommodations). Frankly, it seemed humiliating and I couldn't help view this initiative as "North American stupidity", totally away from what it intends to spread under the name of "integral initiatives". The incident didn't hit me so much on a personal level, because as a successful professional in my field, I would be able to attend if I had the will to do so. But it struck my Latin American heart. What a huge example of autism! When Wilber talks about an integral embrace, what is he talking about?

      I adhere to the integral view, but among other things, I believe it needs a deep cultural debate about relations between the North and the South, between premodernity and modernity. It needs a conscious review on how a developing society can be helped to really enter into the sphere of modernity. It doesn't make sense to talk about integration without considering in depth the political mechanisms that create everyday injustice everywhere, with hundreds of thousands of innocent people being condemned to hunger and poverty. Or should we have to resort to the idea of karma? Where there is hunger, integration cannot possibly exist. And the North has an unavoidable responsibility in the declination of our countries.

      Someone could object that the possibility to apply for a fellowship to attend the workshop is available to me. But the point is that this is not about me but about us . I would have liked to receive an invitation that explicitly considered the possibility of having lucid minds living in the South participate in the workshop without having to ask for a charity fee.

      In an interview of 2001, Ken Wilber talks about "quality control" in regard to the level of inner development that a person or group applying for financial help from the Integral Institute should have. Which makes me ask: what authority does Ken have to establish the "quality" or level of consciousness a certain individual is focussed on? How does he find people in the 2% group that developed second level thought (holistic thought, highly evolved) and deserve help?

      Is Ken aware of what's going on in these lands? And, once again I would like to stress the fact that I am not talking about financial help in terms of money. But about encouragement to the few green-yellow memes around here. Internally evolved people, many of them leading professional careers imbued by the integral model, but at the same time, immersed in a daily fight for survival or even poverty (I personally know several cases) to the point that sometimes they cannot even have access to a personal computer or the internet.

      I would like the Integral Institute to have, to be coherent, a greater commitment to ease the discomforts of globalization within its limited field of action. If we talk about the need of Integral Politics, these are topics that cannot be left aside. There is a need for another kind of Ethics here and there.

      A tragically comic fact about the workshop is that Fred Kofman, one of the professors, is argentine. In an interview that took place during the True Leadership training on June 11, 2001 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada -transcribed by the Shambala Institute- he refers to Argentina's recent history. For God's sake!!! Fred: you must be a good person, perhaps an excellent mathematician and economist since you had the privilege to attend MIT, but ... you are truly ignorant about what is going on in this country! To read your comments is somewhat shameful. It seems that after living in the USA for so many years, the cultural autism that prevails there has taken you over. I suggest you read Jauretche, Feinmann, Sábato, Nun, Boron, etc. to understand how and why we reached this state of situation.

      Leaving aside personal anecdotes, lets continue with our reasoning: What does "to integrate" mean in cultural terms? Or rather, how? An existing problem in Latin America is how to integrate indigenous people with white men. There are centuries of bitterness behind. During the days of the civil uprising that led to the fall of the government of Sánchez de Lozada, a colleague from La Paz, Bolivia told me that the problem didn't end there. It only opened a truce as there is an underlying cultural breach between indigenous people and the native "white".

      How does integration work in cultures that for centuries have been in opposite sides in their economic values, politics, education and so forth? How is South America, the bastard child born to an European conqueror integrated?

      European blood mixed with Indian blood runs in my veins, a mixture that came in a poor way, as it was not a union agreed upon love. In our South America, an indigenous culture with its own values and costumes has been here for five centuries. Today, this land is inhabited by millions of "white" that don't quite belong to our ethnic origins nor to Euro-American culture. How do we integrate, how do we transcend our bitterness carried across so many years of exploitation and indifference?

      A possible way to start would be to make our own selfcriticism. To determine our responsibility in the unfortunate social situation we have arrived at. To maturely take responsibility for choosing and allowing our corrupt politicians to run our country with the implicit consent of our passive attitude in the game of institutions.

      Currently, our country is for the first time making public a sophisticated manner of corruption in our inexperienced democracy; "the purchase" of a law. What is this exactly about? A secret system of "toll" to have laws that benefit large corporations passed was unveiled. The system consisted in purchasing the vote of a congressmen in exchange for his support for the approval of these laws. The existence of this system has always been known but, as a society, we remained passive in front of rumors that were not so much so. In the year 2000 and complying with a request made by the IMF, a change in labor law set back the accomplishments of Argentine workers 50 years behind. The case was made public and society remained passive. Only three years later -and this could well be a historical turning point-, the issue was brought up again and is publicly discussed.

      We also have to take our part of responsibility in the looting our country and the consequences that are striking our face; poor nutrition and child mortality.

      This selfcriticism, in fact, is indispensable to clean the political system. But, how is it going in the North? Because we cannot ignore the fact that this law, as many other economic maneuvers, was sponsored by the North. However, when the time to take responsibilities comes, the Empire looks in a different direction. Indifference in front of the past and current massacre this part of the world is living, is, to say the least, immoral. Mario Benedetti beautifully expressed the essence of this reality in a wonderful poem: " There is also a South ", that Serrat turned into a song.

      So the question remains, how do we integrate? Reading a text from Roger Walsh -another American that will give the workshop with Ken Wilber-. I cannot but ratify my first impression. This author, a leading figure of the Humanist movement and later, Transpersonal-Integral, around 1982 wrote his book " Staying Alive ", worried about the risk of a nuclear confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union.

      But if the scenario of a nuclear disaster gives chills, seeing the face of a hungry child as a consequence of social injustice, also does. Nuclear war did not take place, but hunger and injustice continued its relentless march.. Walsh asks himself after travelling along the East and witnessing the conditions of this poor society. "Where have I been up until now? Was I asleep? I would like to ask Roger, are you aware of what is going on down here? When you "invited me" to a workshop that is worth US$ 3.500, where you asleep or in a state of foolishness? Where did your worry in the future of mankind go? What do you do to help integrate clashing cultures? It is so much easier to worry about the far away neighbor than for the man that is only a few meters away from your frontier and whose exploitation in part sustains your own quality of life.

      The North grows, develops, invents, discovers, promotes. And what do I get from that? I can answer that question accepting the importance of the great amount of inspiring literature from the North that has reached my hands. There is also no doubt that results from scientific research in health and technology make my life more comfortable. Perhaps that is the help extended by the North to the South. But my own personal case is not relevant. What I am talking about is from a macro view. How can we, following the Onmilevel-Omniquadrant model proposed by Ken Wilber, create the conditions for a world government or a Federation of Democratic States (lower right quadrant)? I am aware of the fact that Integral Politics is one of the interests of the Integral Institute. I ask myself, what priority is given to this crucial point?

      Let's take a look at the area of relationships. When a crisis between their members occurs, sometimes they look for an attorney to deal with their economic differences, and at other times, they look for a psychotherapist. This is my job and I know well that helping to resolve a relationship in crisis is tough and complex. But as a therapist, I also know that to resolve a conflict an indispensable element from both parties is required: the will to take individual responsibilities on the causes that contributed to take the relationship to a crisis. In order to achieve a peaceful reconciliation (even if it implies separation) each member must "see" his part in the story. Looking into my own responsibilities lowers the natural inclination (or neurotic trend) to place the problem outside. This attitude is helpful to understand difficulties and mutual limitations.

      Ken Wilber tittles one of his books "Science and Religion: the marriage between soul and senses", and throughout its pages he applies a similar method to reconcile science with religion. I believe that the same methodology could be applied to the collision of cultures mentioned by Samuel Huntington.

      In a macro level, the UN should promote integration. But now, what role has the USA given the UN on the last international events (for example, events in Irak)? The role of an old piece of furniture out of use. Certainly it is not an example of Integral Politics.

      Is the USA going to head a world government that will look after a more just order, peace and international prosperity? That sounds so much as Neoimperialism. The worst of the blue-orange meme.

      Poor Ken, with his difficult illness and the enormous contribution for a better integrated world. And here I am, questioning down here. But it is not criticism that comes out of bitterness but a matter of concept. How do we jointly undertake an integral task in the world. How do we bring the North and the South closer together. How do we dissolve fragmentation. How do we cure deep wounds.

      Over a century ago, the Theosophical Society set itself the objective to "build a nucleus of a Universal Fraternity without distinction of race, sex, creed or color" and "pull together the highest minds" for such a job. That was the first integral initiative in the planet I can recall of. But unfortunately, personal faults, lack of greatness, insidious egos, made such a beautiful aim sink.

      The Integral Institute doubled that bet in planetary terms. Do its leaders have their hearts open, full of compassion, or are they infected by the virus of the "stupid white men"?

      Like elsewhere in the planet, in my country there is also a "North and a "South". In the city I live in, in my neighborhood, in my family. In general I belong to that local North. And it is my personal job to help integration, without being inflexible or indifferent in front of the pain that strikes my face.

      When I am sitting in front of a table of a sophisticated restaurant with my partner and a poor child asking for charity approaches us, sometimes I give him money, at other times food and sometimes I explain why I cannot give him anything. But what I never do is ignore him . Indifference from the prosperous toward those that are less fortunate is the worse of insults and, obviously, does not help any kind of integration .


      ¹ Name given to the dwellers of the city of Buenos Aires

[Volver]