Bring the work and insights of Sri Aurobindo into the 21st century

Towards an integral, p2p approach to posthuman destinies

Michel Bauwens

6th January 2010 we focus on inner technologies of self knowledge and self-governance and their co-evolution with ethical stances appropriate to the ubiquitous technological environments we increasingly populate.

For me an integral approach is an approach that refuses reductionism in any form and that combines an understanding of both (inter)subjective and (inter)objective aspects of any reality (always combining inner and outer realities!!). Peer to peer on the other hand, adds the ethical requirement that we should treat each other as equipotential beings who all have something to contribute to the world, and that we need social systems that allow the full expression of those possibilities for every human being.

While both the integral and p2p approaches are growing separately, it is still rare to find them combined. The better known integral approaches, such as those of Ken Wilber, take a strong pro-hierarchy stance and align themselves with neoconservative values.

There is one exception that I’d like to bring to our readers attention and that is the site maintained by Rich Carlson and friends, called “Science, Culture, Integral Yoga“, and which attempts to bring the work and insights of Aurobindo into the 21st century. It’s a site that consistently brings high quality thinking and it has started focusing on posthuman destinies lately.

A recent example of a blog item to give you a flavour of the site:

* Bernard Stiegler and the Question of Technics

But especially look at this four part series:

* Techno-Capitalism and Post-human Destinies – by Debashish Banerji

I asked SCIY editor Rich Carlson to explain the motivation of the site and their focus on the posthuman theme.

It is undoubtedly heady stuff but for those willing to do their theoretical homework, this site really rocks. Really one of the few places where the history of the future is being written, and that has got its emancipatory heart in the right place.

Rich Carlson:

“Much like P2P, Posthuman Destinies contemplates emerging global networks, technology and culture. Additionally, perennial matters of identity and difference, being and becoming etc.. are foregrounded through articles and discussions that concern posthumanism.[...] References

* Hayles, K. My Mother was a Computer, Chicago University of Chicago Press, 2005

* Virilio, P. Polar Inertia. London: Sage Publications, 2000.

* Foucault, M. Order of Things, New York Random House Press, 1970

* Aurobindo Sri, The Life Divine Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1949

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